News

The $819 billion federal economic recovery package that the House approved Wednesday (today) will inject California’s public school system with nearly $10 billion in federal aid over the next two years, providing funds for scholarships, child-care development, at-risk children, Head Start, school renovations and other programs.

Under the proposed stimulus package, the Berkeley Unified School District is set to receive a little over $4 million over the next two years in combined construction, special education and Title I funding increases, with $2.5 million allocated for 2009-2010 and the remaining assigned for the next fiscal year.

Other East Bay school districts, such as Oakland Unified and Alameda Unified, will receive a total of about $64 million and $4.5 million respectively.

Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Sheila Jordan said that funds for the different school districts were based on enrollment, adding that a lot of time was being spent to analyze how California—which received some extra money compared to others since it was an “economically distressed state”—would use it.

The news comes at a time when the state’s public education system, like that of many other states nationwide, is reeling under the threat of possible state budget cuts which would take away billions of dollars in federal spending from school districts, including roughly $9 million from Berkeley Unified in the next two years.

“Everyone is anxious to see additional money come in,” said Jordan. “This is one-time money and we can’t use it for ongoing costs. The feds want everyone to spend it quickly. The whole idea is to stimulate the economy. As soon as the final bill is released we will have to press the governor to release the money to the Department of Education so that it can get it into the hands of the districts. However, exactly how this money is going to be used is not clear.”

Some district educators said that the two-year investment in public schools by the federal government could reduce the cuts by half in the district and even curtail lay-offs. Others said that they were fearful the state would take away money to address its own budget problems.

Bill Huyett, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District, said that of the total amount assigned to Berkeley, $1.2 million was for construction, which would leave the district with $3 million and do nothing to alleviate its budget problems.

“It will do nothing to relieve this year’s cuts, which are going to be around $3 million,” he said, adding that the district had already started the process of determining cuts and lay offs.

Huyett said that cuts for the 2009-2010 fiscal year were topping $6 million.

Nancy Riddle, president of the Berkeley Board of Education, said that although the news was very positive, the district would not be relying on the stimulus package for its initial planning on how to deal with the budget cuts.

“I am hopeful about what we are hearing in Washington but won’t count on it,” she said. “There aren’t any details yet and there are usually strings attached with whatever Washington says.”

Riddle said that the proposal itself was very encouraging since it would fund previously neglected programs such as special education, providing a boost to children who require special care and attention to succeed but don’t always have the financial capabilities.

“The federal government spends so little on education, that to have them target things like early childhood education and school renovations—which would create jobs for a lot of people—is really great,” she said. “I am hopeful that they will do something about K-12 education as well.”

Of the $14 billion set aside for K-12 repair and modernization, California will receive about $1.7 billion over the next two years to be used for health and safety repairs, revamping educational technology and infrastructure and facility upgrades for disabled students.

Board vice-president Karen Hemphill said that she was happy that the United States finally had a president who recognized the importance of federal support in public education.

“I welcome the fact that President Obama wants our children to be competitive globally,” she said. “It’s the first time in many years that the federal government is stepping up to its plate and providing money with mandates.”

Hemphill said that although federal law required school districts to provide appropriate education to special education students—which could range from going to a speech therapist to accommodation in another school district—the government has always underfunded the program, leaving school districts with no choice but to use general fund money.

“To read that the federal government is signing an increase in funds for special education means that they finally realize that the mandates are costly and it needs to be a part of paying for those services,” she said.

The stimulus plan would provide $13 billion over two years to increase the federal share of special education costs and prevent these mandatory expenses from forcing states to cut other areas of education.

It also sets aside $600 million to help districts serve children with disabilities age 2 and under.

California is expected to receive $1,422,484,000 in special education funds over two years.

Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, said that an increase in federal aid to special education would free up general fund dollars which pay for teacher salaries, leading to fewer cuts and lay-offs.

“This is helpful but doesn’t change the fact that the state government is completely failing the students of California irrespective of this money,” she said. “Their lack of action is going to lead to a high number of layoffs.”

State law mandates that teachers be sent layoff notices by March 16 this year.

The pre-trial hearing for the case, which was originally scheduled for Monday, has been postponed to March 23.

Hoeft-Edenfield's first request for bail was denied on Aug. 19, after Jacobson ruled that the evidence presented before him in court was not sufficient to prove that he had acted in self defense.

Wootton, 21, a Sigma Pi fraternity member, was stabbed once in his upper chest, between his ribs, in front of a group of students outside the Chi Omega sorority house on Piedmont Avenue on May 3.

Hoeft-Edenfield, 20, was arrested later that day.

Yolanda Huang, Hoeft-Edenfield’s private attorney, told the judge Monday that the Supreme Court had ruled that her client was entitled to a hearing and to bail.

She said that the Alameda County District Attorney Stacie Pettigrew—who will be prosecuting Hoeft-Edenfield—did not object to the bail request.

Jacobson said that since he did not have sufficient paperwork to determine anything that afternoon, he would be carrying the bail motion over to next week.

He added that Huang had made a series of requests which would require Pettigrew to interact with the Berkeley Police Department for answers.

The judge also asked for a progress report on the matter by the next court date and announced that he had received documents from the University of California Police Department and the social website Myspace.com, where Wootton had written several blog entries.

The courtroom was filled with family and friends of Hoeft-Edenfield, who appeared around 3 p.m. wearing a yellow jumpsuit.

The 2020 Vision, initiated in June as a collaboration between the City of Berkeley, the Berkeley Unified School District and community organizations to close the achievement gap in the schools, will launch an All City Equity Task Force during a three-day retreat at the Berkeley Yacht Club starting Thursday.

Organized by the non-profit Berkeley Alliance, which entered into a one-year $61,800 contract with the city in October to provide services for the 2020 Vision and other partnerships between the school district and UC Berkeley, the private workshop will bring together more than 50 people from the city, Berkeley Unified and several organizations to brainstorm strategies before sharing them with the broader community.

The contract states that the Alliance—which began in 1996 as a result of cooperative efforts between the City of Berkeley and UC Berkeley, with the school district taking part as well—will work with the city to develop and implement programs for the new citywide initiative, which “emphasizes a coordinated school, agency and community approach that leverages and weaves school and community resources in a comprehensive manner and focuses on tangible outcomes for all students.”

The district is recommending that the school board approve a $50,000 grant on Wednesday for the Alliance to lead the new city-wide task force.

In August the Berkeley Alliance formed the 2020 Vision Planning Team, comprising 19 members from the city, the school district, United in Action, BayCES, UC Berkeley, Berkeley City College and the Alliance itself to craft an action plan for the 2020 Vision, including putting together the citywide equity taskforce.

No information about the retreat, its participants or agenda is available on the Alliance’s website, which lists all meetings related to the 2020 Vision.

Calls to the Alliance’s outgoing director Tracey Schear and to its Berkeley office for comment were not returned.

Schear resigned from the Berkeley Alliance late last year after working there for three years, and continues to work on the 2020 Vision as a consultant while the organization’s board of directors manages the transition.

The Alliance has begun its search for a new executive director—estimated to earn $85,000-$96,000 annually—and hope to have someone on board by the end of March.

Michael Miller, director of Parents of Children of African Descent and a member of United in Action, said that 80 invitations had been sent out for the retreat, even though there are places for only 50.

“The goal is to come up with some specific strategy and then go to the community and discuss what we have,” he said.

“We want to have a deeper conversation about the economics of it and the relationships. There’s some push back in the community about who’s involved and who’s not involved and what it means for students who are already successful. There are some controversial issues and some confusion. We want to clear all that.”

Santiago Casal of United in Action, the multi-ethnic community group which first proposed the 2020 Vision to the district, said that plan was to “involve everybody.”

“To mobilize the entire community is a big endeavor,” he said. “The sheer energy of us coming together and talking is quite exciting. In terms of actually implementing something, it probably won’t be until next year, when the class of 2020 will be in 2nd grade.”

The Alliance, according to the contract, is also responsible for developing the funding blueprint for the 2020 Vision program, including a targeted strategy to tap private foundation contacts in the Greater Bay Area and nationally and submit at least three citywide grants by the end of the financial year 2008-2009.

At a community meeting at Berkeley Technology Academy last week, Bill Huyett, superintendent of Berkeley Unified, briefed more than 50 parents and community members about the progress made in drafting strategies to eliminate the achievement gap.

Miller acknowledged that there was no silver bullet that would solve the achievement gap in standardized tests, explaining that a student’s academic success was possible only with a “total community approach.”

Huyett said that it would take the city, the school district and the community at least six more months to come together and start working as a group, adding that once the strategies for the 2020 Vision were finalized, all 16 public schools in Berkeley and their staff—including classified workers—would have to work it into their daily schedule.

Some district educators said that the Berkeley High School redesign plan—which would implement block schedules and advisory periods if approved by the Berkeley Board of Education—would be an important part of turning the Vision 2020 into reality, although some parents continue to question the loss of instructional minutes that would result from it.

One of the strategies outlined in the 2020 Vision update includes developing a more robust and coherent curriculum, instruction, assessment and intervention, and identifying problem areas and alternate structures that would help educators relate to children better.

The superintendent also talked about training Berkeley Unified staff in a way that would help them cope with a diverse student body, including providing them with professional development to improve culturally responsive teaching and initiate a positive behavioral support system, which would increase student engagement and achievement and reduce inequities in discipline.

Other ideas include strengthening early childhood education and hiring and retaining teachers and administrators of color, something the district has been trying to do this past year by sending out teams to scout for talented African American teachers and trying to offer them attractive enough packages to encourage them to work in Berkeley.

Miller said that some of the major concerns from parents included questions about raising performance levels for teachers who were underperforming, having parent liaisons at schools and easier access to information for families who did not have Internet or e-mail at home.

“We can’t say we are on target because we don’t quite know what our target is,” Miller said. “It’s shifting depending on our priorities and our economic climate. One of the things folks don’t understand is that it’s difficult to come up with strategies with a large group of people.”

School board member Beatriz Leyva-Cutler echoed his thoughts.

“It’s taking a lot more time than anticipated, but it’s still going forward,” she said. “At this point a lot of parents are concerned about how the 2020 Vision will affect their children. We need to look at data to come up with strategies and the schools have to plan their activities around it.”

The first draft of the key regulatory document required before the city and UC Berkeley can sign off on a new downtown plan is now available online.

The draft environmental impact report for the Downtown Area Plan is posted at the city’s website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=33630.

The document is also available for physical examination at the city’s central library and in the planning department offices at the Permit Service Center, 2120 Milvia St. Copies are also available for purchase at the center.

The massive document, prepared by Oakland consulting firm Lamphier-Gregory, will undergo one revision after public comments have been heard.

The Berkeley City Council must certify the final EIR incorporating the public comments and the university must also give its approval before the document can become final. The unusual dual approval process results from the settlement of a suit by the city challenging the university’s Long Range Development Plan 2020.

In exchange for settling the suit, the city will receive mitigation payments from the university, while the university gets to have veto power over the plan.

The university will scale back on payments if the City Council doesn’t approve the EIR and the plan by May 25.

The suit was sparked by the university’s revelation that it plans 850,000 square feet of new off-campus construction in the city center, including offices, parking facilities, a museum and other facilities.

The EIR provides a maximum framework for new development downtown that can be approved without the need for developers to prepare a separate EIR on many of the impacts of their projects, City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks told planning commissioners earlier this month.

The commission will conduct a public hearing on the draft EIR during its regularly scheduled Feb. 18 meeting.

Members of the public may make comments on the plan by e-mail or post to Matt Taecker, the planner hired by the city and UC Berkeley to help develop the document. The addresses are mtaecker@ci.berkeley.ca.us or at his office at the Department of Planning and Development, 2120 Milvia St., Berkeley, 94704.

More information on the plan will be available later on the Daily Planet’s web site and in the print edition.

Two and a half months after local voters passed a $48 million parcel tax increase designed to shore up AC Transit’s financial base, the bus district board is now considering service cuts and fare increases that voters hoped the passage of Measure VV would stave off.

The AC Transit board has scheduled a special workshop for Wednesday, 10 a.m., at the AC Transit district headquarters at 1600 Franklin St. to consider staff recommendations for a 25 cent fare increase starting July 1 as well as possible reductions in bus line service that a staff memo says could “result in major adjustments to lower-performing lines in the district and will be noticeable by the public and patrons” as early as December of this year.

The Berkeley City Council takes up—once more—the complicated issue of modification of its condominium conversion law, raising the salary of the city manager and the progress of a city sunshine ordinance on Tuesday, 7 p.m., at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Among other things, the council will consider staff-recommended ordinance modifications that would change the fees charged with a building is converted to condominiums.

The council set those fee amounts in 2005, but has seen little if any revenue from conversions since then, and has been hearing complaints from both owners and tenants that the ordinance needs adjustment.

When the council first brought up proposed changes last September, there was general agreement among the council, city staff, owners, organizational representatives, and residents speaking at the meeting that the current conversion fee is probably too high and that the city approval procedures are too complicated, but little agreement on how much to charge or what parts of the procedure to streamline or change.

City manager salary

The council is also scheduled to vote on a proposal to raise the salary of City Manager Phil Kamalrz by 8 percent, from $17,900 to $19,300 per month. The item is on the consent calendar.

Sunshine Ordinance

The council will also vote on whether to hand over the citizens’ draft of the sunshine ordinance—crafted as an alternative to the Berkeley city attorney’s version—to city manager’s office for review. The item is on the consent calendar.

Planning commissioners have a single topic on Wednesday night’s agenda: their ongoing effort to implement a City Council directive to create more flexibility in West Berkeley’s zoning rules.

Developers and property owners have been seeking changes in the zoning rules to eliminate what they say are obstacles to effective use of property in the only area of the city where manufacturing and light industry are permitted.

One push from developers is for a revision of city regulations governing master use permit (MUPs), and city planning staff is proposing a revised process that would allow the Zoning Adjustments Board to modify existing permitted uses and development standards on sites of two or more acres in exchange for benefits to the city.

The proposal also includes a developer-requested change that would allow sites governed by an MUP to be developed sequentially rather than all at once.

While the process was renamed from the original title of West Berkeley Flexibility because of concerns raised among some stakeholders, the concept is present through the staff MUP proposals.

Among areas where increased flexibility is proposed are:

• Off-street parking requirements, up to a full waiver of any on-site parking slots.

• Permitting the substitution of uses on sites now zoned for manufacturing, warehouse, wholesale or recycling businesses.

• Allowing an accelerated design review process for some projects. Planning staff has been developing proposals in meetings with three groups of stakeholders: members of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), a separate group of developers and property owners , and the West Berkeley Project Area Committee.

UC President Mark Yudof named a key ally of new U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to fill the secretary’s former post as head of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Chemist Paul Alivisatos had been serving as deputy director of the lab and chief research officer. He will be interim director of the lab until a permanent director is found.

At Chu’s direction, Alivisatos and fellow lab scientist Jay Keasling drew up the blueprint for what became the Helios Energy Research Facility, which has given birth to a $500 million research program funded by British petroleum giant BP and a plan for a controversial laboratory above Strawberry Canyon which is currently undergoing environmental review.

The BP-funded Energy Biosciences Institute is researching a variety of alternative energy programs, but most of the research is focused on turning non-food crops into fuels using patented microbes to break down cell walls into transportation fuels.

EBI research includes the use of engineered microscopic “nanomaterials” as catalysts in the fuel-making process, one of Alivisatos’s research specialties and one of the reasons Chu named him to head LBNL’s nanotech research facility, the Molecular Foundry, from 2001 to 2005.

Like fellow biofuel resesearchers Keasling and EBI head Chris Somerville, Alivisatos is an entrepreneur, and was a founder of at least two private-sector nanotech businesses, Quantum Dot Corp. and Nanosys Inc. He also serves on the board of a third company, Solextant, Inc., according to a UC press release.

Nanoparticles are themselves controversial, with some research indicating some of the resulting particles may have cancer-causing properties similar to those of asbestos.

While a UC Berkeley faculty member, Alivisatos will manage the lab on behalf of Chu’s Department of Energy. LBNL is one of three Berkeley-run DOE laboratories, the others being Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos.

UC announced that the formal search for Chu’s replacement will commence “in the coming weeks” to advise Yudof on a permanent replacement.

UC is proposing to pay Alivisatos $406,980 a year as interim director, a 14 percent bump over his current salary of $357,000. He’s also set to receive an $8,916 annual car allowance as well as the option to participate in UC’s home mortgage program, according to the university.

“Like many others, I have been inspired by Steve Chu’s vision of how the work at our lab could overcome some of the most difficult challenges of our time. I share that vision and welcome the opportunity to lead this great national laboratory at such an historic moment,” Alivisatos said in a prepared statement released by the university.

Alivisatos “is a preeminent scientist with superb leadership and management experience,” Yudof said in the same press release. “I am confident that he will provide excellent leadership for the Berkeley laboratory during this transitional period as it continues addressing some of the greatest scientific and energy challenges confronting our country.”

The public will be able to comment on the Berkeley citywide pools master plan—out today (Friday), a week later than it was originally scheduled to be released—starting Saturday at a community workshop at the James Kenney Recreation Center.

The master plan seeks to renovate the crumbling infrastructure at the Willard Middle School lap pool and build new pools at King Middle School and West Campus, including a warm water pool for the East Bay’s disability community, which currently uses the warm pool at the Berkeley High School Old Gym. The Old Gym is scheduled for demolition in June 2011 to make room for athletic facilities and 15 classrooms.

A task force put together by the City of Berkeley and the Berkeley Unified School District, as part of a resolution to find a site and draw up plans for the warm pool and possibly other pools, came up with three options for the master plan, all of which include new pools at King and West Campus—the proposed site for the new school district headquarters—and renovated facilities at Willard Middle School.

The draft states that while preparing the plan, the task force was determined to maintain the current distribution of neighborhood pools, particularly in the underserved neighborhoods of West and South Berkeley since a “reinvigorated neighborhood pool system would contribute to a more close-knit community.”

It adds that the new and renovated pools would also stimulate the city’s economy by bringing in revenue.

The proposed improvements at King and Willard are the same in all three options. The West Campus site would have different pool dimensions and pool configurations in each option.

• Option 1 would provide a new 25-yard by 25-meter competition pool at King, a renovated lap pool and a dive pool converted into a shallow play pool with a slide at Willard and a 2,790-square-foot, 92 degree indoor warm water pool at West Campus for a total cost of $19.5 million.

• Option 2 proposes the same idea for King and Willard but throws in a 2,600-square-foot, 86 degree indoor lap pool along with the warm pool. The total cost for this plan is an estimated $26.3 million.

• Option 3 keeps the King and Willard plans intact, but decreases the size of the warm pool to less than half, 1,200 square feet, and increases the lap pool to 4,190 square feet, for a sum of $26.7 million.

At King, all three options would include removing the existing instructional and dive pools and constructing a new competition pool in its place, upgrading the locker rooms and adding new decks, fencing, outdoor lighting and landscaping for $4.8 million.

According to the draft blueprint, one of the reasons the task force opted for King as the site for a new competition pool was because Berkeley Unified hopes to provide, and potentially expand, swimming programs at King and Willard middle schools.

Also, it states that the new state-of-the-art facility will open up opportunities for the city to host swim meets and allow the Berkeley Barracudas and other local swim teams to train in competition-size pools. The city is investigating off-site parking requirements for King since the school district lacks additional sites for on-site parking.

If the final master plan is approved, Willard will get a renovated swimming pool and convert its existing dive pool into a shallow play pool with a waterslide, an idea the task force feels will attract more children and create a welcoming environment for families. Lockers and decks on the campus will get a facelift and new underwater lighting will be installed. Capital costs for this project is $4 million.

At West Campus, all the three options developed by the task force would get rid of the existing instructional and dive pools and construct a new LEED certified building to house the indoor pools—which would include an energy efficient lobby and administrative office, common changing rooms and privacy shower cubicles, assisted dressing rooms and abundant deck space for viewing, wheelchairs and attendants.

Task force members explained that since West Berkeley was a relatively neglected part of the city, a new pool in addition to the warm water pool would help neighbors to get involved in exercise and recreation programs.

Capital costs for a new single warm water pool, as underlined in the draft master plan option one, would cost $10.6 million. It would be used primarily by seniors and the disabled, unlike entire pool complexes which would attract a more diverse crowd. The total cost for a new warm pool and an additional lap pool, as proposed in option two, is estimated to be $17.4 million. The third option for West Campus, which reduces the size of the warm pool and expands the lap pool, would cost $17.9 million.

The cost of operating all the pools is still being chalked out, city officials said.

After including community feedback in the draft master plan, the task force will forward it to the Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley Board of Education in March for approval, following which it will be subject to environmental review.

The city’s Disability Commission, Youth Commission, Commission on Aging and the Parks and Recreation Commission will also weigh in on the plan as part of the environmental review process, which is expected to last from May 2009 to Jan. 2010.

Once the City Council and the school board adopt a final citywide pools master plan—expected to take place in January and February 2010—the City Council will probably put it on the ballot for the June 2010 election to fund pool improvements.

To view a copy of the citywide pools draft master plan visit: www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=28522

While a Berkeley man has been charged with murder following Tuesday’s death of the victim of a Jan. 11 West Berkeley shooting, a 47-year-old woman originally charged with the shooting has been released.

Berkeley Police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said Thursday that the district attorney’s office decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Rhonda Reid in the death of Lee William Payton.

Lee Freddie Green, 50, was already in custody at Santa Rita County Jail on a charge of attempted murder for the shooting, and the charges were raised to murder after 27-year-old William Payton died of his injuries in Highland Hospital.

Police responded to 911 calls reporting a loud argument in the 1100 block of Parker Street shortly after 8 p.m. on the 11th. As officers were searching the area, they heard gunshots and soon found Payton bleeding from his injuries as he lay in the parking lot at the rear of the Bank of America at 2546 San Pablo Ave.

Reid was arrested near the crime scene after a search by police from Berkeley and Richmond, assisted by officers from the California Highway Patrol.

Green turned himself in the following morning after he learned that police were looking for him, Sgt. Kusmiss said. He remains in custody.

The proposal for the Berkeley High School redesign—which has generated controversy so far but has been moving at a brisk pace since it was first unveiled in November—is scheduled for public discussion twice in the next two weeks to give the community and district officials a chance to comment on its strengths and weaknesses.

Berkeley Board of Education director John Selawsky said that he could understand the sense of urgency on the part of high school officials to understand better where the plan was headed, since they were intending to implement it in the new school year starting in August.

District officials have described the advisory programs in the redesign as an important part of the 2020 Vision—an effort by the school district, the City of Berkeley and some community groups to close the achievement gap.

The Berkeley High School Governance Council on Jan. 21 approved a revised version of the redesign plan ,which will be presented to the school board at a special study session Wednesday.

As to whether the board was going to take any action on the plan that day, Selawsky said there was still some work left to be done before that could happen, adding that that it was more likely that it would be brought before the board for action on Feb. 11.

Under the revised plan, the advisory periods and the community access periods would be combined into a single period within the eight week block schedule.

Two of the combined periods per week would begin with a 30-minute advisory, with the rest of the time available for the community access period—which would be supervised by advisors, who would be able to assert more control over the entire process.

Some parents had earlier been concerned that if students were unsupervised during the community access periods—as outlined in the original plan—it would lead to chaos and confusion, and maybe even a complete waste of time.

Also, under the new version, advisory programs would occur by grade levels, and advisors would work with each group of students for only a year.

Professional development would take place on Monday mornings instead of Wednesdays and the Tuesday-through-Friday schedule would be the same every week, with late-start Mondays alternating between periods 1 through 4 one week and 5 through 8 the next.

Ninth- and 10th-graders would take eight classes—including the combined advisory and community access period—which would give students an extra elective.

Juniors and seniors would be given the option of doing something similar. Students would also be able to combine their community access time with another period if they were interested in attending class at a community college or pursuing other interests.

The exact details of this aspect of the proposal are still being worked out, according to an e-mail sent out to the Berkeley High community by the school’s Parent Teacher and Student Association President Mark van Krieken Thursday.

Another feature, which has created some amount of discomfort among a group of parents, is the elimination of science labs by including them in science classes.

Science classes that have traditionally had a zero- or seventh-period lab will now have to fold it into a regular class, which would result in a 33 percent reduction in instruction minutes for students in AP classes.

Teachers have been asked to submit proposals for double periods to address this.

Although the revised plan has been called “tighter” than the original one by some board members and parents, others remain skeptical about the loss of instructional minutes.

Parents and other community members will be able to comment on the redesign at a public forum being hosted jointly by the Berkeley High administration and the PTSA on Feb. 3.

Speakers from within the district and elsewhere are expected to be present to give an overview of how the plan will benefit students at Berkeley High.

• Special study session on the Berkeley High redesign plan: Jan. 28, 2009, Wednesday, 6 to 8 p.m., Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. In order to accommodate this special session, the board's closed session will begin at 5:30 p.m., and the regularly scheduled board meeting will begin at 8 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m.

With the national, state, and local economies continuing to tank and the California State Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stalled on how

to close a $42 billion budget deficit—though with the certainty that some of that money will be drawn from local government agencies—East Bay governments are struggling this month with how to ride out the tough economic times.

Berkeley survived the first round of state financial cutbacks for the 2008–09 fiscal year by earlier setting aside $1.8 million in the city budget for such a contingency, but that contingency fund has now been used up. During a Jan. 13 budget update given to the Berkeley City Council, Berkeley city staff said that the city may be looking at as much as $8.5 million in state takeaways for the current fiscal year, including $5.3 million in boating and waterways loans, $1.6 million a piece in parks bond grants and Proposition 1B street monies, and $1 million in parking fine monies.

After earlier dips in projected revenues from local sources, the city’s local revenue stream has—for the time being—stabilized.

“On Dec. 8, we projected major [local] decreases in the property tax and in sales tax from projections,” City Manager Phil Kamlarz told the council. “We got one more month’s receipts and those seem to be on track.”

Staff is proposing a number of immediate actions to tighten up Berkeley’s city budget in anticipation of state legislative action, among them a hiring freeze for non-essential positions, cuts to the city’s health and mental health departments, limiting overtime for non-emergency and non-essential city services, deferment of capital projects, limiting city travel and non-essential expenses, and a moratorium on the creation of new programs.

With no ability to raise taxes in the short run to fill in for the loss of state revenue, the city will also be looking at a combination of revenue enhancements and speed-ups in the next weeks, including increasing fees and collection times, cost-cutting measures in existing programs, and the possible elimination of some city programs.

Meanwhile, Berkeley must move forward with the development of its next two-year budget, scheduled for implementation beginning in July, with a series of workshops scheduled this winter and spring, culminating in the presentation of the first draft of the preliminary budget to the City Council on May 5.

As daunting as they seem, however, Berkeley’s budget problems are miniscule compared to neighboring Oakland’s.

Oakland faces the same situation as Berkeley, with a current fiscal year's budget that is projected to end balanced, but which will almost certainly go immediately out of balance once the state legislature and the governor agree on their local takebacks. And City of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, who has placed himself in the point position in the city on budget matters, told Oakland City Councilmembers at a January 12 special all-day five year budget workshop that that the city is facing escalating structural budget deficits over the next several years, from a projected $50 million shortfall in FY 2010 (beginning July, 2009) to a $58 million shortfall the following year, peaking at a whopping $114 million projected deficit in FY 2012 when increased city payments into the state employees retirement fund (PERS) are expected to begin. Oakland city budget officials expect the local economy to bottom out in 2012, and are projecting a return to rising city revenues thereafter.

Berkeley faces the same rise in PERS costs beginning in 2012.

Oakland must also decide whether, and how, it will maintain the authorized strength of 803 police officers. Dellums told councilmembers it costs $10 million annually to run the three training academies necessary to keep the police department at full strength, but only $4.5 million has been set aside in the current budget. To make matters worse, the money from Oakland’s violence prevention Measure Y “will become insufficient in 2010 to maintain the current staffing level of 63 PSOs (problem solving officers),” according to Dellums, so that the money to maintain the PSOs must also be found in the general fund.

In addition, the mayor said that “no discretionary funds” remain in the city’s capital (building) fund, and an additional $3 million in funding per year must be found to finance the city’s ongoing capital pro-jects.

Oakland City Council Finance Committee Chair Jean Quan called it “a very tough year.”

With the possibility that Gov. Schwarz-enegger will authorize a special election in November to put on measures to shore up the state’s sagging budget, the Oakland City Council is considering several ballot measures of its own. Quan said that a committee composed of herself and councilmembers Larry Reid and Pat Kernighan have been meeting with representatives of the Kids First! committee—sponsors of last November’s Oakland Measure OO—to try to work out language of a new compromise ballot measure to make modifications to OO, which increased mandatory percentage set-asides in the Oakland city budget for youth programs.

“If we can’t work out a compromise, we’ll go for complete repeal” of Measure OO, Quan said.

Quan also said that the council may “perhaps go for a small parcel tax” on the possible special election ballot this fall in order to make up for deficits in the city’s Landscape and Lighting Assessment District (LLAD). But some councilmembers said that after last November’s defeat of a parcel tax ballot measure to increase revenues for the Oakland Police Department, the council may wait before putting another police tax measure on the ballot.

While Oakland and Berkeley’s employee retirement funding increases will be put off until 2012, Alameda County’s retirement funding troubles are immediate. Unlike the cities, whose employees belong to the state employees retirement system (PERS), Alameda County operates its own system, the 20,000 member Alameda County Employees Retirement Association (ACERA). And like so many institutions and entities heavily invested in the stock market, ACERA is facing financial difficulties.

In a special meeting of ACERA Board members and Alameda County Supervisors held late last year, ACERA officials said that the fund lost $1.7 billion in stock market investment value between 2007 and 2008 ($5.6 billion to $3.9 billion), with a $600 million one month drop between September and October of 2008 alone.

Chuck Conrad, ACERA chief executive officer, said that because ACERA officials had projected an 8 percent fund increase this year, the total one year loss for the fund from the expected balance will be 40 percent.

While Conrad said that he believed “many stocks are being undervalued in the present market” and expected that the value of ACERA’s investments will rise, ACERA is looking at the possibility that it will have to ask Alameda County to put money into the fund in the short run to keep it solvent. Conrad said that a decision on such funding will not have to be made until March or early April.

Supervisor Keith Carson, who sits on the ACERA board and called for the special joint meeting, said the “implications” of ACERA’s funding problems and pending request for county funds were “quite sobering,” considering that the county is facing tight budget problems itself.

In a nod to the country’s economic turmoil, President Barack Obama's first public act in office Wednesday was to freeze the salaries of high-paid White House aides who make over $100,000 a year.

—Associated Press, Jan. 21

“Proceed with caution” was the advice that City of Berkeley Budget Manager Tracy Vesely offered the council during its Dec. 8 budget work session. Citing “the failure” of the nation’s banking sector, California’s “almost $28 billion deficit”—it’s now ballooned to over $40 billion—and a $2 million decline in Berkeley’s General Fund monies for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2008–09,Vesely said that “the city will again be confronted with some difficult choices, as budget cuts are unavoidable.”

Mayor Bates’ response? He’s asking the council to increase City Manager Phil Kamlarz’ monthly salary from $17,903 to $19,335—an 8 percent raise—effective Feb. 8. That’s a jump from $214,836 to $232,020 a year. The money is to come from the General Fund.

The rationale for the proposed raise, as stated in Item 4b.11 on the Agenda Committee’s Jan. 20 agenda, cryptically entitled “Salary Adjustment for the City Manager,” is “to bring [Kamlarz’] salary to the median of City Managers in comparable cities in the Bay Area.”

In fact, the mayor is seeking far more than an 8 percent monthly raise for the C.M. He’s asking the council to okay a whole new and higher range of salary steps—a.k.a. a reclassification. That’s because at $17,903 a month, Kamlarz is pulling the maximum “actual monthly salary” for a Berkeley city manager. Supposedly, the only way he can get more is if the city manager slot is reclassified.

But Kamlarz may already be getting more than $232,020 a year from the city. Exhibit A, attached to Item 4b.11, indicates that his “adjusted annual maximum”—his “actual monthly” salary plus some benefits—currently comes to $241,156. So the city manager’s current $17,903 “actual monthly salary” isn’t really actual.

In any case, Kamlarz may be getting more yet. The rule of thumb is that city of Berkeley employees’ benefits equal at least 50 percent of their salaries, so the C.M.’s current total compensation may well be over $300,000 a year. His full benefit package isn’t laid out in the mayor’s report.

Bates’ report also fails to mention the annual 2 to 2.5 percent cost of living increases that are charted on another (unnumbered) attachment. Kamlarz would receive the first of these so-called COLAs on June 28, a mere four months after his initial raise. By Dec. 25, 2011, his “adjusted annual maximum” salary would rise to $282,920 (not counting additional benefits).

Last May, Daily Planet reporter Judith Scherr wrote that Kamlarz was earning “about $208,000 … plus about $100,000 in benefits” and was “asking for a wage hike from a City Council subcommittee evaluating him.” (The mayor’s report mentions no such quest or council subcommittee charged with evaluating it.) The C.M. is now earning at least $232,020 a year, so in the past eight months, his compensation has gone up at least 11.5 percent.

The 11.5 percent increase apparently comes from the 3.5 percent “cost of living adjustments and benefit improvements” plus a “Longevity Pay Differential” (percent unspecified) that the council, acting on the C.M’s recommendations at its Oct. 7 meeting, gave to Kamlarz and other “Confidential and Executive Management” employees who belong to “Representation Unit Z-1.” The Longevity Pay Differential is available to employees who have more than 25 years of benefited service.

The council approved these raises on consent, which is to say, without discussion. If on Jan. 27 the council approves Bates’ current request (which is also designated for a “consent” approval), then since last May Berkeley’s city manager will have received a salary increase of 19.5 percent.

In defense of the latest proposed raise, the mayor argues that Kamlarz’ current salary is 8 percent below the median of salaries paid to city managers in fifteen other Bay Area jurisdictions. Bates asserts that “the Berkeley city manager position is equally, if not more challenging, than most of the city manager positions surveyed,” given “the size of city of the Berkeley budget and staff, the range of services provided, and the degree of community involvement.”

The mayor also cites precedent: “In setting employees’ salaries, it has been the council’s policy to compensate employees at the median of comparable jurisdictions.” This is true. The same rationale was used to justify raises the council granted most City of Berkeley employees in fiscal year 2007–8.

Why, given the dire state of the economy, is the mayor proposing a raise for anyone in City Hall, least of all, for an employee who’s already making nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year (and possibly more)? Is Berkeley in a municipal arms race, with employee pay replacing weapons? What happened to notions of fiscal austerity, belt-tightening, living within our means?

Before answering these questions, I’d like to take a closer look at the data that the mayor had city staff assemble to support his proposed “salary adjustment for the City Manager,” and specifically at Exhibit A, a chart entitled “City Manager—Compensation Survey/October 2008.” (We can understand why the mayor waited until after the November election to go public with his request to increase the C.M.’s pay.) The survey lists 16 cities, each city’s budget, its number of full-time employees (FTEs), and the actual monthly salary, adjusted monthly salary, and adjusted annual maximum salary currently received by each jurisdiction’s city manager.

I have reconfigured the chart, listing the cities in ascending order of their city managers’ adjusted annual maximum salaries. Drawing on the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, I have also added each city’s population and median household income.

Far from supporting the mayor’s proposal, the survey’s findings raise big questions. Why on earth, for example, is San Jose on the list? With a population of 929,936, an annual budget of $3.7 billion and 6,992 city employees, how can San Jose possibly be compared to Berkeley? Ditto for bankrupt Vallejo, whose city manager gets $320,436 a year (second highest among the 16 cities surveyed). At $342,903, San Jose’s city manager is the top earner here. Were San Jose and Vallejo included to jack up the median salaries?

Indeed, what were the criteria of “comparability,” to use the mayor’s term, that determined which cities were surveyed? How can Palo Alto, a rich city where the median household income is $90,377, be compared to Berkeley, where the corresponding figure is $44,485?

Bates cites the number of employees that Kamlarz has to manage as a rationale for increasing his pay. Berkeley taxpayers might wonder: Why does our city, with a population of 101,555, have 1,660 city employees, while Daly City, pop. 101,005, has 525; Hayward, pop.140,607, has 900; and Fremont, pop. 140,606, has 912? Does Berkeley’s conspicuously large city workforce—by far the third largest on the list (San Jose and Oakland are respectively #1 and #2) and much bigger than workforces of cities with comparable populations, signify better management or worse?

In short, the numbers suggest that cities vary so greatly that there is no firm ground on which to base any city manager’s compensation, except what the market, i.e., taxpayers, will bear.

To understand the push to raise Kamlarz’ pay, we have to look elsewhere. The Berkeley C.M. is nearing retirement. If the council approves the requested reclassification, the city will be able to attract a successor who demands big bucks.

Here’s another explanation. In school we learned that in the early 20th century, the city manager system was instituted as an alternative to corrupt political machines. From now on, Americans were told, their cities would be run like big businesses, not personal fiefdoms based on patronage and personal allegiances. City managers and their staffs were disinterested civil servants, who above all prized competence and efficiency.

The Berkeley situation belies this roseate image. In recent years City Manager Kamlarz has repeatedly identified the control of labor costs as a, if not the, crucial factor in ensuring the city’s fiscal stability. Yet he has just as regularly sought and received council approval for substantial raises for city employees. Now, at a time of extreme financial instability, he has apparently embarked on a campaign to raise his own compensation by tens of thousands of dollars. (According to City of Berkeley Human Resources Director David Hodgkins, the Longevity Pay Differential was first instituted for Unit Z-1employees in June 2008.)

Though character is always a factor, the root of the problem isn’t Kamlarz; it’s the city manager system itself. The C.M. is in an inherently contradictory position; he’s at once the top administrator and the top employee. He needs to seek the good of the city as a whole, but he also needs to command the loyalty of his subordinates; one of the surest ways of doing so is helping them maximize their earnings, even when such assistance conflicts with his own budgetary recommendations (which it regularly does). The more he makes, the more they can justifiably claim for themselves.

In principle, the city manager follows the council’s direction. But when it comes to budget and finance, practically speaking, he leads the council by the nose. Mind you, they are willingly led.

I predict that on Jan. 27, the council will unanimously approve an 8 percent raise for Kamlarz—on consent.

Thousands gathered to watch the outdoor broadcast at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza of the
inauguration of Barack Obama.

For the 3,500 Berkeley High School students who watched the presidential inauguration unfold Tuesday morning, the steps of the Community Theater could have very well been those of the U.S. Capitol—their solemn expressions and sporadic bursts of laughter capturing one of the greatest moments in the nation’s history.

A sea of black, Latino, white and Asian students packed the theater’s auditorium by 8:45 a.m., along with teachers, parents and high school staff, to watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, standing up when both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden took the oath of office.

Alameda County Schools Chief Sheila Jordan said that every classroom in the county had witnessed this historic transition, one she hoped would give schools in California a chance to emerge from the financially dire situation threatening the state of public education statewide.

Berkeley High Vice Principal Vernon Walton said the idea of screening the inauguration had dawned upon school officials when they received invitations to view the ceremony at UC Berkeley, which projected the event at Sproul Hall, and the Oracle Arena in Oakland.

“We thought that we had a place big enough to fit all our students, so why not just do it here?” he said.

At the Community Theater, a giant screen projected crystal clear images from Washington, D.C.—thanks to the wonders of modern technology and Berkeley Community Media—and a hush fell through the audience when the President started talking.

Jamar Leonald, a Berkeley High junior, stood in the aisles the entire time Obama spoke, moving only to applaud along with the rest of the crowd, which had squeezed into every available seat in the theater.

“I am happy now that we finally got a black president, and I am happy that I was able to experience history,” said Leonald, a runner back for the high school soccer team, who wants to play professional football when he grows up.

“I think it’s going to be a new beginning and a change in the world ... If Obama can do it, I can do it.”

Leonald, like many of his classmates, woke up as early as 6 a.m. to watch the celebrations on TV with his family and then rushed to school to catch the most important part—Obama’s speech.

Juniors Teraya Taplin, Dazji Daniels, Adriana Clark and Nialena Ali broke into applause as soon as they saw Obama on the screen, and waved wildly while hugging each other in joy.

“Historical,” they said beaming, when asked to describe the moment in one word.

“It’s a big change, a major change,” said Taplin.

Ali said that she loved Obama’s oratorical skills.

“He is really articulate and effective and he also gets everybody’s spirit up,” she said. “He’s a genius. Since he’s president, maybe one day we can be president or it could also be that our kids could be president.”

The four girls said that Obama’s victory meant that young blacks like them had a “real story to tell” to future generations.

They swooned over first lady Michelle Obama, admiring her poise and style and calling her a “role model.”

“She is a real woman, very very cool,” said Taplin smiling. “She stands by Obama but she doesn’t need anyone’s support. She’s got her own boost. I just loved the gold dress she was wearing, but I thought her daughter Malia’s blue coat was cuter.”

Ryan Conner, a 10th grader at the high school, sat listening outside the auditorium after failing to secure one of the coveted seats inside.

“For me, it means plenty of opportunities,” said Conner, 15. “He is a good leader who has opened a lot of doors. He’s my hero because he might just have changed the world. I love basketball and I think it’s kind of cool that he likes to play basketball too.”

Jamil Whetstone, a member of the Berkeley High football team, said he would have given anything to go to D.C. to watch the ceremony, but added that he was grateful to his school administration for giving him the opportunity to watch it in such a grand way.

More than 65 parent volunteers ushered the event, making sure that everything worked like clockwork. School started on a late schedule at 10 a.m.

“It was a really exciting place to celebrate this, as exciting to be on the Capitol steps,” said Sandy Horwhich, one of the parent volunteers, after she made sure that the last student had left the Community Theater and gone to class. “I am very inspired to be here with the children—they were serious at the right time and excited at the right time. Everyone understood the importance.”

Lorrie Gray and David Harrington, Berkeley High parents who had chaperoned a group of students to Reno right before the November elections to help get Obama elected, said that they were impressed by how cooperative everybody was during the morning’s events.

“Initially a lot of students didn’t know who Dr. Joseph Lowery was, they were like ‘who is this old guy?’” said Harrington smiling. “But then he turned out to be the hippest guy. They realized he had walked with Martin Luther King Jr. and was somebody who has done a lot of work in the civil rights movement. I guess it’s a generational thing—they can relate to Barack but not with someone who came before him.”

Most parents interviewed said that they were extremely proud of the way their children had behaved during the inauguration and hoped that Obama would continue to inspire them—the “laptop generation”—to think about the bigger world instead of just their iPods and video games.

“This massive hope for these teens is really important,” said Tom Lent, a Berkeley High parent who works in green engineering. “Their view of American politics has been framed by the Bush presidency. This is a radical change from the norm, from what they are used to.”

Lent said that he was happy with the straight talk Obama offered and described his inaugural speech as “refreshing.”

“He talked to us like we were adults and didn’t gloss over stuff,” he said. “We need a lot of changes right now, especially in the economy, global warming and our schools.”

Downtown planner Matt Taecker tells planning commissioners about the impacts of proposed new high rises on the city center.

One of Berkeley’s two new planning commissioners last week proposed a move that would scrap outright the key compromise of the downtown plan shaped by a now-disbanded citizen committee.

Theresa Clarke is one of two new commissioners who made their appearance at Wednesday night’s meeting, along with a returning member who had briefly left the panel.

Clarke’s suggestion to scrap the limits on the number of new high-rises allowed in the city center brought an audible gasp from one commissioner, Patti Dacey.

Meanwhile, critics of the plan created by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) came to the meeting armed with a new set of talking points: DAPAC’s plan was wonderful for its time, but it’s been superseded by events.

DAPAC Chair Will Travis, who had found himself on the losing side on DAPAC’s votes to set limits on the numbers and heights of new high-rises, made a passionate plea calling on commissioners to be dispassionate in their deliberations.

Travis and other critics like former city Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades, now a developer himself, and representatives of Livable Berkeley (Rhoades’ spouse Erin Banks is executive director), called on commissioners to grease the skids for taller, denser downtown development.

The reasons? New state laws pushing development on transit corridors, the need for radical measures to combat greenhouse gases and a search for ways to stimulate development in a down-turned economy.

“Forward-looking leaders have finally recognized that we must confront global climate change in everything we do,” said Travis. Higher buildings and greater density “are critical,” he said.

But beneath the green rhetoric, the “smart growth” advocates wanted to scrap many of the “green” measures included in the DAPAC plan, including provisions that would grant height only in exchange for erecting buildings with low-carbon footprints and significant funding to provide truly affordable housing.

Mayor Tom Bates appointed Travis as DAPAC chair—an unusual move in a city which typically has allowed committees and commissions to elect their own chairs. Each City Council member had two appointees, and Bates’ second pick, Juliet Lamont, proved the antithesis of Travis, leading the efforts to shoot down his build-it-taller proposals.

Lamont urged the commission not to rewrite the plan, but simply send DAPAC’s original on to the City Council with their recommendation for adoption.

Fee questions

The building boomers want the commission to lower the fees that would allow developers to erect all-market-rate apartment and condo buildings in exchange for paying the city “in-lieu fees” that would help bankroll all-affordable buildings elsewhere.

But cutting the in-lieu fees on buildings that commissioner Gene Poschman has said will only house million-dollar condos is certain to attract criticism from the only city councilmember who has been attending commission sessions of late, Jesse Arreguin, who was elected by downtown voters in November.

“I’m concerned about some of the things that commissioners are suggesting, such as cutting fees for affordable housing by 50 percent and removing all the conditions for increasing development downtown,” said Arreguin, who had served on the city’s housing commission before his election.

Helen Burke, a former commissioner who represented the panel on DAPAC during its two years of deliberations, faulted the proposed revisions developed by the planning department staff because “they break the green requirements” DAPAC had written into the plan.

Burke also disparaged an economic analysis of the impact of building height limits on the feasibility of new construction. While that analysis held that no new construction of buildings between five or six stories and 16 stories was likely given economic constraints, Burke said “conditions have now changed drastically.”

But Dorothy Walker, a retired UC Berkeley administrator, said she was disappointed the staff report didn’t urge more and bigger buildings. “We must allow four or five exceptional buildings of at least 180 feet so that we can get the benefits we are seeking.”

Otherwise, she said, staff would be conceding most new downtown development to the university, which plans to build 800,000 square feet of new construction in the heart of the city.

Other audience members said they were concerned that high-rises would destroy views of the hills from surrounding residential neighborhood and harm the character of the city center.

Charging forward

Both the DAPAC version and the commission’s alternative will go to the City Council, which can approve one or the other or work up their own version by combining elements of both. To give themselves time to finish their run through the chapters, commissioners voted to add additional meetings to their schedule.

The plan’s environmental impact report (EIR) is being written now, even though the plan isn’t complete. The reason? The city must approve the plan, and that requires approval of the EIR, in May, lest the university start withholding payments to the city negotiated in the settlement of a lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan 2020, which laid out Cal’s extensive off-campus building agenda.

“Our plan is to at least get you the comments from the EIR before you act on recommendations to the council,” Berkeley Planning and Development Director Dan Marks told commissioners.

The EIR will consider the impacts of a plan that allows construction of two 220-foot hotels in the downtown inner core area and four additional buildings at 180 feet. The outer core would include six 120-foot buildings, two of which would belong to the university.

But the planner hired by the city with the help of university funds to steer the planning process, Taecker, recommended only three 180-footers for the plan’s final draft. He also said that the feasibility study had shown 120-foot buildings to be not feasible for apartment/condo use, “but it didn’t look at it for offices.”

Marks said the possibility of the taller hotel buildings was at best questionable, given the current state of the economy. And even in better times, the Massachusetts-based would-be developer of the university-supported hotel at the northeast corner of the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street had told the city the hotel would be feasible only if the developer could include condos.

“But condos and hotels are now pretty well dead, and they may be dead for quite a long time,” Marks said.

When it came to a final decision on building heights, Taecker, said he wasn’t looking for a final vote, but “a general sense of how various commissioners feel about various building heights.”

During a second round of public comment, members of two lobbying groups, Livable Berkeley (which also includes Walker among its members) and Berkeley Design Asdvocates dominated, leading the charge to taller and denser.

Livable Berkeley’s executive director Banks, Alan Tobey and Sachu Constantine represented that group, while Tony Bruzzone spoke for Berkeley Design Advocates. Joel Ramos spoke on behalf of TRANSFORM, the group formerly known as the Transportation and Land Use Coalition.

Their arguments have been consistent throughout the planning process: Only significantly increased population density will make for an economically and socially viable downtown, while bringing more people into proximity to BART and buses will reduce per capita greenhouse gas emissions.

It was Clarke, one of two new commissioners attending their first meetings Wednesday, who dropped the bombshell that drew Dacey’s gasp and a eyeball roll from Gene Poschman.

Victoria Eisen, the second newcomer on the commission, had also served on DAPAC, and while she’d didn’t endorse Clarke’s proposal, she suggested that the commission might find a way to create more density by allowing more of the taller buildings endorsed by the feasibility study, while reducing the overall total of stories created by combining all the buildings permitted under the DAPAC plan.

But in return, she insisted, the commission should hold to the requirements DAPAC had proposed for increased height.

Commissioner Harry Pollack said at least twice during the meeting that all the commissioners seemed to agree on goals, leaving only the means to be decided. Dacey grimaced both times.

“We have to let go a little and let the market work things out,” said Clarke, at which point Dacey threw up her hands.

Commission Chair James Samuels, a retired architect, said that while 75 feet was the most cost-efficient building height, “We need to get to 180 feet before we can pay for all the things we need.”

“Most of the development will continue to be five to seven stories,” said David Stoloff, who was returning to the commission after a brief hiatus. “We are over-worrying about a forest of tall buildings.”

As many watched the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States Barack Obama from their homes, I spent the morning and afternoon at the site of the event. Excited as ever to have a seat behind the capitol pool in the “Silver” section, I arrived shortly after the 9 a.m. opening of the gates. Expecting slight amounts of waiting and inconvenience, I rode up the escalator out of the Federal Center Metro Station in downtown Washington D.C.

There were a lot of people. Expected, I thought. So I found the line for Silver and started to follow it. It lapped around a corner, then another corner, and then nine or ten more corners. When I reached the end of the two-mile line, a volunteer told me that the actual line was at 3rd and Independence and that this line led to nowhere. I went over there and that is when the trouble began.

Have you ever heard the word “mob mentality?” Imagine hundreds of thousands of people clumped on one city block, all trying to find their way to security locations that have been changed already several times on inauguration day. Half of the people are not moving, and the other half are pushing those people.

After lots of aggressive crowd maneuvering, I made it to the Silver section. I was around the capitol pool, with a good view. As I moved closer and closer on the east side of the capitol pool, the policeman at the front informed all of us that he would not open the gate that would allow us to move to the middle of the land in front of the capitol pool. The only entrance to the middle was the west side. In another case of maneuvering, I ventured to the west side and made it to the middle.

Great, right? At around 11:30 a.m., my friend, however, wanted to climb a tree to get a better view. Capitol police saw him and made us both leave. Confused and pissed off, we were instructed to go to the exit, which put us in another crowded group of people where we couldn't move.

Luckily, the same crowd broke down the barricade, and I was able to return to the same location that I was at earlier—just in time to hear Obama speak. To chants of “Obama” and “Yes We Can,” Obama gave an inspiring speech that will always echo in my mind.

More than a million people came to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to witness the inauguration.

“Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character’s content,” President-elect Barack Hussein Obama proclaimed from the Lincoln Memorial, two days before his inauguration. Standing amid a shivering yet rapturous sea of countless thousands who clung to the President-elect’s every word like a comforting mug of hot cocoa, I couldn’t help but wonder: Does this moment represent the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream?

In part. “An entire generation will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African American. It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children,” Obama told the Washington Post.

At the same time, let’s recall that Dr. King dreamed many dreams, not just one of racial equality. The U.S. government tends to portray a sanitized version of the preacher, devoid of his passionate advocacy for nonviolence, peace, and economic justice.

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his assassination, Dr. King delivered a revolutionary anti-war sermon. Dr. King condemned the U.S. government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today ... a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

For King, the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” were interconnected. King outlined how wealthy elites profited from U.S. imperialism, and poor people and people of color bore the burden. “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures such as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”

King called for a “revolution of values” that would not simply put new people in power, but would invest a new power in people. King called this power nonviolence, or “soul force”—love for all life put into selfless and, at times, self-sacrificing service on behalf of the common welfare, the “beloved community.” “When I speak of love I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.” King saw humanity facing a choice—“nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.”

In King’s vision, U.S. society would not change, it would transform. “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.” King sought to restructure not only social relations, but also the outmoded ways of thinking that give rise to man’s inhumanity to man.

On Monday night, Dr. King’s son Martin III told Larry King, “In relation to race, a monumental step has been made, but poverty and militarism are at epidemic levels.” Jesse Jackson wrote in Monday’s New York Times: “[If Dr. King were alive today], he would be beaming. I am equally confident that he would not let the euphoria of the moment blind us to the unfinished business that lies ahead.”

What would Dr. King think of Barack Obama’s policies? Were he a candidate for higher office, I imagine Dr. King’s platform would more closely resemble that of presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, or Dennis Kucinich. Dr. King surely would have favored single-payer universal health care, justice and reparations for Bush/Cheney war crimes, an end to corporate welfare, a comprehensive renewable energy program, cutting the massive military budget, ending U.S. support for Israel’s Apartheid, a cabinet-level Department of Peace, and immediate steps toward global nuclear weapon abolition, to name a few.

To be fair, Obama is dealing with powerful, entrenched political interests who will do everything in their power to derail a progressive agenda. Would the platform described above have made Obama’s election impossible? One imagines that the Israel Lobby and the military contractors would have pumped truckloads of money into Hillary Clinton’s coffers in an effort to upend the primary results. I conversed with several democratic Congress members at inaugural balls, who told me the same thing: U.S. military aid to Israel is the “third rail” of U.S. politics. Challenge it, and you get politically electrocuted.

As crowds packed the national mall on Tuesday to witness the President’s swearing-in ceremony, my thoughts drifted to another part of the world, a place filled not with marble but rubble. Israel’s Gaza onslaught left over 1,000 dead and 4,500 wounded, mostly civilians, killed by bombs donated by the U.S. Government. Forty-three years ago, Dr. King said about Vietnam: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” The president-elect’s silence on Gaza was deafening.

A few weeks before the inauguration, another African-American candidate for president, Cynthia McKinney, boarded a Free Gaza boat in a nonviolent attempt to deliver medical supplies and humanitarian relief to Gazans. Israel’s navy rammed McKinney’s boat and nearly sank it. As McKinney’s boat began to take on water she reflected, “One of my mates told me to prepare to die. I was right with myself and my decision to join the Free Gaza movement … Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter,” McKinney concluded, quoting Dr. King. McKinney wants the new president to discontinue military aid to Israel.

Were he alive today, I suppose King would add “environmental extractionism” to the great triplets. And King would note that as with militarism, poor people and people of color usually pay the heaviest price. UC’s Steven Chu—a biofuels and nuclear power cheerleader whom Obama tapped to run the Dept. of Energy—offers little hope for progressives with his recent about-face comments on coal. “I’m hopeful and optimistic that we can figure out how to use coal in a clean way,” Chu told the Senate, turning his back on reality and rural communities suffering from billions of gallons of hazardous coal ash sludge swirling through east Tennessee’s rivers, not to mention the Appalachian mountain wasteland.

If it yet be possible to save us from “spiritual death” and ecological calamity, the U.S. empire must end. Obama’s plans appear to offer no daylight. The military vampire sucks more than half of the country’s financial resources, and President Obama has pledged not to cut, but to expand the military. War will perhaps be ramped down in Iraq and ramped up in Afghanistan, but the President has announced no plan to end war.

Jesse Jackson is right. Much business is yet unfinished, the revolution of values perhaps only just begun. In Dr. King’s time, it took civil rights marchers enduring the beatings and assaults of white segregationist police to generate the political pressure for President Lyndon Johnson and the Congress to pass legislation. If we want our new president to not only be a physical embodiment of Dr. King’s dream, but also a policy advocate for a progressive agenda, it is up to the people to carry forward the torch of committed nonviolent action and push Obama in a progressive direction.

At the Southern Regional inaugural ball, one of the 10 official galas where thousands of sharply dressed revelers waited hours for a brief glimpse of the First Couple, Obama closed the festivities with a cheek-to-cheek dance with a beaming Michelle. “Let’s get to work on remaking America,” the new president said as he exited. Earlier that day, Civil Rights Movement leader Rev. Joseph Lowery articulated what should be the aim of our work: “Lord, deliver us from the exploitation of the poor and from favoritism toward the rich … Let us work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation … when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

If we believe that the dream has come true and forget the rest, we will shortchange Dr. King’s legacy as surely as the U.S. government does every time it trumpets “I have a dream” while omitting his revolutionary words of April 4, 1967 from the collective consciousness. Let’s work on remaking Barack Obama into the president that Dr. King would have wanted, and ourselves the nonviolent actors King sought to inspire.

Matthew Taylor (www.matthewtaylor.net) is writing a book about the Save Memorial Oak Grove treesit.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wants to consolidate lab operations now in West Berkeley with other research in this proposed new General Purpose Laboratory building above Strawberry Canyon.

While Planning Commissioners are revising the West Berkeley Plan to attract new biotech labs, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) wants its own biolabs out of the neighborhood.

LBNL, until recently headed by new U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, wants all its biotech labs “back on campus,” officials told a public meeting Jan. 14.

Of the new three-story, 43,000-square-foot General Purpose Laboratory building, 60 percent would be allotted to offices and 40 percent to so-called “wet” labs, said LBNL project manager Richard Stanton.

He and other lab officials spoke during a Jan. 14 session at the North Berkeley Senior Center held to gather public comments to be addressed in both a state-mandated environmental impact report and a federal environmental impact statement.

The federal report is required because the lab will function under LBNL’s Department of Energy (DOE) programs, unlike the Helios Building, which is not under the DOE, said Mark Chekal-Bain of the lab’s public affairs staff.

Research in the facility would focus on cancer and the impact of radiation on cells, the basic mechanisms underlying cancer, fundamental biology, neuroscience and environmental cleanup, said lab staff scientists Damir Sudar.

The new lab is part of a broader project that will be examined in the environmental statements for what is dubbed the “Seismic Life Safety Phase 2B Project.”

Included within that larger project is demolition of several existing buildings at the lab including Buildings 23 and 23B, the trailer offices at Building 21, and either Building 55 or one or more of nearby buildings 4, 5, 14, 16 or 17—with the either/or decision depending on available funding.

Roughly the same square footage would be demolished as would be contained in the new biolab building.

The project also includes a seismic upgrade to Building 85, the lab’s Hazard Waste Handling Facility to stabilize the structure, which is built in a landslide zone.

Construction of the new lab would result in a net increase in 100 employees on the lab campus, most of them drawn from the lab facilities LBNL currently leases from Wareham Development Group at 717 Potter St. in West Berkeley.

The lab leased 72,000 square feet in Wareham’s Aquatic Park Center in early 2005 shortly after Bayer moved out of the building. LBNL/UCB scientist Jay Keasling’s Amyris Technologies vacated part of the site last year, moving to a new building in Emeryville, which it shares with the DOE-sponsored Joint BioEnergy Institute, a lab Keasling heads which parallels in some respects work being done at the lab under the auspices of a $500 million grant from BP.

The BP project will be headquartered in the Helios Building, which will be built not far from the proposed new biolab overlooking Strawberry Canyon.

Lesley Emmington-Jones, one of the plaintiffs who has sued the university over its Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) covering development at the site through 2025, said the hearing went well.

“They gave people a chance to make a second comment,” she said.

Many of the speakers urged the university to consider another site for the facility off the hillside, which they said is susceptible to landslide, earthquakes and fires, and an important cultural and natural resources for area residents.

Among alternative sites proposed were the university’s Richmond Field Station, a large site on Mandela Parkway in Oakland, another location in San Francisco or some other site in the Green Corridor designated by mayors from Oakland to Richmond as a site for future environmentally related research.

While Sudar said locating the lab on the hill was important for enhancement of team science, Emmington-Jones said “team science is no excuse for building in an unsafe, environmentally sensitive site.”

She and other plaintiffs including Daily Planet Arts and Calendar Editor Anne Wagley are fighting a legal challenge of the lab’s LRDP. Another suit challenged the lab’s proposed Computational Research and Theory (CRT) facility located at the opposite end of the lab.

A ruling in Alameda County Superior Court ordered the lab to recirculate its previously approved EIR for the LRDP because it failed to include an analysis of the climate change impacts resulting from its massive construction program.

The lab has appealed that decision.

As long as the LRDP lawsuit is pending, the university is required to conduct separate environmental reviews of each LBNL construction project. Final authorization of the LRDP EIR would allow the lab to avoid separate EIRs by tiering off each project from the total construction outlived in the LRDP.

The plaintiffs had also challenged the CRT project in both state and federal court, but dropped the state action to concentrate their efforts on the federal case, said Emmington-Jones. The lab has filed notice of its intent to declare the CRT eligible for construction next month.

The public comment period for preparation of the draft EIR/EIS closes Tuesday. For more information on the project, see the lab’s website at http://www.lbl.gov/community/seismicsafety2/

If approved by the UC Board of Regents—tentatively slated for December—construction would begin the following month with the start of demolition, with a completion date of March 2015.

Roia Ferrazares is off the planning commission and, for the moment, no one is willing to say why—at least on the record.

“I’m not going to comment,” said City Councilmember Darryl Moore, who appointed her to the commission Sept. 26, 2006. “I am treating it as a personnel matter.”

Moore said he has been and will be replacing several commissioners.

Pressed for details, Moore said, “I don’t expect to get anything positive from the [Daily] Planet on this thing.”

Ferrazares was perhaps the most independent member and the least predictable vote on a strongly divided panel.

She asked incisive questions and often spotted implications in proposals that slipped by most of her colleagues. Uniquely on the commission, she would often vote with the majority after deeply questioning the proposals she would ultimately vote for.

But her downfall, according to several sources, was her respect for Gene Poschman, appointed to the commission by the late Dona Spring and the panel’s resident policy wonk.

“That’s interesting” was the only comment Moore offered when questioned about the assertion.

Ferrazares did not return a reporter’s calls.

Moore’s replacement, Teresa Clarke, and the addition of a second new member from the development industry give a strong majority to advocates of so-called “smart growth” that would add height and density to new construction downtown and along transportation corridors.

At the same meeting where Clarke joined the commission, Victoria Eisen, a transportation planner, took the seat Susan Wengraf had held prior to her election to the City Council.

Wengraf was not directly involved in the development industry, though she typically voted with the pro-intensified-development majority on key votes.

Also rejoining the board at the same session Jan. 14 session was David Stoloff, the appointee of Mayor Tom Bates, initially appointed six years earlier.

Stoloff is a retired planner and development specialist, as well as a founding member and until recently a board member of Clarke’s employer, Affordable Housing Associates, where she holds the title of Senior Design & Construction Manager.

With two architects on the board—the two James, Samuels and Novosel—and land-use lawyer Harry Pollack, that leaves only Merritt College math prof Larry Gurley, private investigator Patti Dacey and retired professor and former legislative aide Gene Poschman as the board’s only non-development types.

An appointee of long-time councilmember Maudelle Shirek to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, she was ousted by Shirek’s successor, Max Anderson. Councilmember Kriss Worthington soon named her as his pick for the Planning Commission shortly after Samuels had also moved from Landmarks to Planning.

Clarke’s former boss at AHA, Ali Kashani, is now in the private development business, partnered with Mark Rhodes, the city’s former manager of land use planning. Rhoades’ spouse, Erin Banks, the executive director of “smart growth” advocacy group Livable Berkeley, has filled in on the Planning Commission during member vacancies.

Ferrazares is office manager for the dean’s office at UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Sciences, the largest department at the university.

Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board— which will now meet only one Thursday of the month instead of two because of the scarcity of new projects in the city’s Planning and Development Department—is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to approve real-estate developer Ali Kashani’s five-story mixed-use project, a proposal to build 98 condos, 7,770 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 114 parking spaces on a 43,210 square-foot lot.

At a Dec. 11 meeting last year, the board held a public hearing on the project and, after hearing Berkeley resident Steve Wollmer’s objection to the wording of its proposed permit’s handling of affordable housing units, continued it to Thursday to allow city planners additional time to provide revised density bonus calculations and inclusionary housing units.

Additionally, a staff report put together by the city’s planner Aaron Sage, who is overseeing the proposed project, states that Kashani has withdrawn his request for a concession under the state’s density bonus law to not provide any inclusionary units on the fifth floor.

The location for this meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m., has changed from the Old City Hall to the North Berkeley Senior Center at 1901 Hearst Ave.

More than a thousand protesters jammed the amphitheater at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland’s City Hall Jan. 14 and then marched seven blocks to the Alameda County Administration Building and the Alameda County Courthouse, all part of the continuing demonstrations in the aftermath of the New Years Day shooting death of 22-year-old Hayward resident Oscar Grant III by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.

The demonstration came a day after Mehserle, who resigned from the BART police force several days after Grant’s shooting, was arrested in Lake Tahoe, Nevada and then charged with murder by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.

Wednesday night’s protesters, at times chanting “I am Oscar Grant” and many of them carrying placards with Grant’s photograph, heard an array of speakers denounce Grant’s shooting, what they contend was a delay in the response by the district attorney’s office in arresting and charging Mehserle, and the continuing violent deaths of young men and women in the East Bay, whether it is at the hands of police or their peers. Among the speakers were Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks, protest organizer Dereca Blackmon, Oakland Nation of Islam Minister Keith Muhammad, Oakland rapper Too Short, and Oscar Grant’s grandfather. A letter of support for the protesters from Congressmember Barbara Lee was also read, saying that the Congressmember was pleased that an arrest had been made.

An open coffin with Grant’s name in spraypaint laid on the amphitheater at Frank Ogawa Plaza, and several protesters had paper masks of Oscar Grant on their faces.

Several members of Service International Employees Union Oakland workers carried signs reading “Respect Oscar’s Memory. Oakland Families Are United. Don’t Trash Oakland Merchants.” That message was directed at vandals who rampaged through downtown Oakland a week earlier, throwing rocks, bottles and other objects indiscriminantly through windows in several downtown business sections. Along the route of Wednesday night’s march, many merchants had put up leaflets in their windows calling for justice in the Oscar Grant shooting.

Protest leaders issued five demands in the Grant case, including the indictment and prosecution of Mehserle, the resignation, retirement, or recall of Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff, the release of the names of all of the BART police officers involved in the detention and arrests on the Fruitvale BART platform the night Grant was shot and killed, the creation of a BART Civilian Police Review Board, and BART and City of Oakland support for the creation of community healing and conflict resolution centers for East Bay youth.

Oakland police officials estimated the crowd at between 800 and 1,000, but police estimates are usually low in such cases.

Dereca Blackmon, a local diversity and social justice consultant and co-founder of the Committee Against Police Executions (CAPE) and the individual many have credited with initially sparking the Grant community reaction, told participants in the City Hall rally that she took issue with the assertion in some local and national media outlets that the Grant protesters were only interested in shootings of youth by police officials, but not by other youth.

“People have made insulting remarks asking ‘where was the outrage’ when black men were doing the shooting,” Blackmon said. “Oh, we were outraged. We marched and held prayer vigils and candlelight rallies throughout the community and held our babies close to us and called for an end to the violence in the community.” Speaking directly to the throngs of media representatives that were crowding Ogawa Plaza, Blackmon added that, “but you weren’t there with your cameras when we were doing that.”

While most speakers called for calm among the demonstrators, at least one speaker, Oakland rapper Ise Lyfe, predicted that there would be trouble “in downtown Oakland and at City Hall” if Mehserle were to be acquitted at his eventual trial. Lyfe has posted a rap about the Grant shooting on his MySpace website at http://www.myspace.com/iselyfe, one of the many indications that Oscar Grant is rapidly ascending from a human being to the watchword for a growing cause.

The protest, which both march leaders and various city officials declared a success, was marred by vandalism committed along a three block stretch of Broadway by scattered elements of individuals and groups, some of whom participating in the earlier protest. Police said some 15 individuals were arrested for vandalism in the events following protest, and another three individuals arrested during the march and rallies.

Oakland police and march security worked in coordination for several hours following the march and demonstration in order to keep down the trouble.

A small but dedicated crowd came to Jefferson Elementary School in North Berkeley early Monday morning to make the short trek over to King Middle School for Berkeley’s first-ever march to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday—at least in recent history.

More than 250 students and their parents gathered in King’s auditorium to honor one of the greatest civil rights activists, who was killed 41 years ago in Memphis, Tenn., and spoke about their dreams and aspirations for their family and their country, something Dr. King had also talked about in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King would have been 80 years old this year.

The confluence of the federal holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday with the eve of the inauguration of a black man as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, made the occasion even more special for those who attended.

Middle schoolers carried posters of Dr. King and Obama standing side by side while parents held “I Have a Dream” and “Yes We Can!” placards on both hands.

Every speech, every anecdote either started or ended with the new president’s name, and talked about how he had brought hope to the lives of millions.

“Dr. King to Barack Obama,” said Ann Williams, vice-president of the King PTA, one of the organizers of the march. “Today we are rejoicing in hope, the possibilities and the new.”

Frustrated by the lack of a parade or any public celebration on MLK Jr. Day in Berkeley, Williams said that she and Marissa Saunders, program director for the California College Prep Academy in Berkeley, had decided to take matters in their own hands.

“We were on the bus to Sacramento six years ago to protest the budget cuts and we were wondering why we didn’t have any kind of a march in Berkeley,” she said. “Every year a group of us would say ‘OK who’s going to do it?’ but nothing ever happened. When Obama won, I knew that I just had to do something this year. We are starting small but hope to grow over the next years to report each year how we have ‘changed’ and grown in our Berkeley community.”

Although Williams and Saunders started planning the event before Christmas break, everything else—including invitations to the different PTAs to participate—was put together two weeks ago.

At the end of Cragmont Elementary School fifth-grader Troy Gilder’s heart-rending solo performance of “This Little Light,” Alana Banks, a ninth-grader from the California College Prep Academy, spoke about what change meant to her.

“Obama ‘09 is a bright future to me,” she said, as the audience cheered her on. “It proves the fact that I can do anything. Go to the moon, achieve King’s dream—even fly without wings. I want to spread love not animosity, bring the world to unity, respect all the values of equality. We can all do it if we believe in his dream.”

Michael Miller of United in Action spoke about the relevance of Vision 2020—a citywide effort to end the achievement gap—in the lives of the present generation.

“For the United States to be competent in the world, our kids need the best education they can get,” he said. “What better place to have the kickoff than here today.”

Berkeley Board of Education member Beatriz Levya-Cutler read aloud from Obama’s open letter to his two daughters, Malia and Sasha, in which he says that he ran for president because of what he wants for them and for every child in this nation—starting with good schools, higher education standards, doing away with barriers in academic achievement and the opportunity to go to college, get a good job and ultimately retire with dignity.

“I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential—schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them,” Obama wrote in the letter.

“This is what we want for our children,” Levya-Cutler said to applause. “Safety and the opportunity to live life to the fullest.”

Pastor Michael McBride of Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action described the moment as a very special time in history, a period which would inspire generations of young people after him.

“When I was young, It was hard to imagine a black person running for president,” McBride, who is soon going to become a father, said. “But my little baby will grow up with the image of a black president. But this does not signal the end of any kind of work we have to do. There is so much to be done in the city and the schools.”

Throughout the day in Berkeley, ordinary citizens rolled up their sleeves and responded to Obama’s call for a day of action as a way of paying homage to Dr. King’s dedication to public service by cleaning streets and organizing food drives across the city.

Neighbors picked up trash around Le Conte Elementary School, Berkeley High School, Strawberry Creek and the Halcyon neighborhood, among others, and participated in gathering milk and food at Berkeley Bowl and Whole Foods for the less fortunate.

There were few bright spots in the overview of the Berkeley Unified School District’s high school student data for 2009 at the Berkeley Board of Education meeting last week, especially not the challenges posed in analyzing the test results.

The data took into account student performance at Berkeley High School, Berkeley Technology Academy (B-Tech) and the Independent Study Program.

An hour-long presentation to the school board by the district’s director of evaluation and assessment Rebecca Cheung showed that student participation in the California Standardized Tests (CST) continues to be dismal district-wide, something some district officials blamed on the community’s reluctance to see it as a valid measure for student performance.

The analysis showed that the scores of African-American students were the most underperforming in the data, which included the CST, the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), college entrance tests, GPAs, attendance and suspensions.

White students performed higher than all other groups in these areas, followed by multi-ethnic and Latino students. African- Americans were also the lowest performing racial group and were involved in more discipline incidences.

About 70 percent of white 10th-grade students scored in the top 50 percent nationally on the 2008-09 PSAT.

Cheung told the Planet that the district had not included the scores of Asian students in the presentation because they represented less than 10 percent of the student population. She said that in general, Asians did not outscore white students at Berkeley Unified.

Cheung pointed out that some of the challenges to data analysis at the high school level include the lack of state test scores to allow comparison over time for the individual students.

Additionally, 12th-graders are not required to take state tests and only 70 percent of Berkeley High ninth-graders attended a Berkeley public middle school, making it difficult for educators to track data back to the middle school.

BUSD also lacks district-wide assessments or course-specific exams which can be used for comparison over time, Cheung said, and district officials have little to no capacity to track beyond high school indicators such as college entrance, college completion or vocation training.

School information

High school student demographics for 2009 showed changes in population since 2003, with slight decreases in African- American, white and English-learner students and a slight increase in Latino students.

In the last six years, the total high school population in Berkeley has increased by 18 percent—from 2,949 to 3,482 students.

B-Tech reported a large percentage of African-Americans (65 percent), as op-posed to Independent Study (16 percent) and Berkeley High (28 percent).

The Independent Study program had the largest percentage of multicultural (33 percent) and white (41 percent) students.

Berkeley High’s enrollment demographics showed large differences in its six programs, which includes The Arts and Humanities Academy (AHA), Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS), Community Partnerships Academy (CPA), The School of Social Justice and Ecology (SSJE), Berkeley International High School (BIHS) and The School of Academic Choice (AC).

African-Americans formed the largest group (55 percent) at CPA, and white students emerged as the largest group at BIHS (38 percent).

The international school—which showed the highest percentage of non-BUSD middle school students (38 percent)—also reported the most parents with a college or higher education degree (58 percent).

CAS, at 80 percent, had the highest number of BUSD graduates, followed by CPA.

Board President Nancy Riddle asked district staff to provide more information about the BUSD high school students who had not attended a Berkeley public school before entering 9th grade.

Berkeley High science teacher Aaron Glime replied that earlier reports indicated that students who were new to the district in 9th grade had a higher GPA than those from the Berkeley public middle schools.

Caifornia exit exam

All California public school students are required to pass both sections of the CAHSEE to graduate from high school and must take it for the first time in tenth-grade. Students who fail to pass the test as tenth graders can take the test twice in 11th grade and, if they continue to be unsuccessful, they get five more opportunities as seniors.

Data from the California Department of Education showed that in 2008, the district pass rate for first-time test takers in English Language Arts and math was lower than the state average.

Last year, African-American students reported a significantly lower first time pass rate on the CAHSEE math and English tests than their peers.

Overall, BUSD saw a cumulative pass rate of 90 percent—which takes into account students who passed both tests—for the class of 2008 which was exactly the same as the state's pass rate.

Sixty percent of B-Tech seniors did not pass by June.

Cheung told board members that it was a matter of concern that the district’s pass rate, during the first attempt, was lower than that of the state, posing a greater challenge for the district and the school.

California Standardized Tests

In 2008, student participation on the standardized tests declined betweens grade 9 and 11 district-wide, and was lower than in neighboring districts such as Alameda, Albany, Piedmont and San Leandro.

Cheung said that the other districts started with more participation in 9th grade, and although it lessened in grades 10 and 11, the decrease was still less severe than that of Berkeley Unified.

Berkeley Superintendent Bill Huyett said that lagging participation rates prevented the district from engaging in any kind of longitudinal studies.

Glime said that a variety of factors were behind the low participation, one of them being students’ and parents’ hesitation about the validity of standardized tests since the state had made them optional.

Huyett retorted that although this applied to all public high schools in California, many other districts did not suffer from such low participation rates.

“It starts with the belief system of the school,” he said. “I am not putting blame or shame on the school but the high school has to take participation rates seriously. We all know students are at that stage in life when they will ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ Maybe we should ask them instead what they want.”

There was significant variation in the performance between the different programs at Berkeley High, with incoming 9th graders at Berkeley International High School scoring the highest proficiency in English Language Arts and math in 2008-09 and those at Communication Arts and Sciences reporting the lowest.

Berkeley International High School also scored the highest proficiency rate in both English Language Arts and Math among all the programs in 2008.

Board Vice President Karen Hemphill pointed out that it was very troublesome that programs having students of color from BUSD middle schools had the lowest score.

“Regardless of what good programs and good intentions we have, we are losing our children,” she said. “The programs are not working. Kids of color are worse going out of Berkeley High than they were coming in. It really has to start in middle school. We have to engage them and install a college bound culture in our district.”

SAT, GPA, attendance and discipline data

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a standardized test for college admissions scored by Education Testing Services, provided data to Berkeley Unified for the analysis.

Cheung said that the district decided to base the analysis on how students had performed in the SAT in 11th grade because that was when most students took the test.

In 2008, white and multi-ethnic 11th graders had higher performance rates on the SAT than Latino and African American students.

Of the 11th graders who took the SAT, white students had the highest average score, followed by multi-ethnic students.

Scores of African American students had little variation across the six programs at Berkeley High and were the lowest.

African Americans also reported the lowest participation rate for the practice version of the test, the PSAT, in grades 11 and 12, and while 70 percent of white 10th-graders scored in the top 50 percent of the PSAT, only 5 percent of African American students scored in the top 50 percent.

White students had the highest average GPA and African-American students had the lowest. African Americans also had the highest rate of D and F grade rates

In 2007-08, the range of GPAs for African Americans across programs represented a .5 differential, with the lowest average GPA being 2 and the highest 2.5.

For Latinos, the range of GPAs across the six programs represented a .3 differential, with the lowest average being 2.4 and the highest around 2.8.

Whites had a larger variance between the programs, with the lowest average GPA being 2.5 and the highest 3.4.

Attendance and enrollment patterns for Berkeley High were relatively stable in 2007-08, although B-tech reported changes in enrollment almost every month, with new students joining and others dropping out.

In 2007-08, African American students also reported the highest rates of suspensions.

At Berkeley High School, the number of “one-period suspensions” increased last year while both “one day of on-campus suspension” and “off-campus suspensions” decreased.

About 81 percent of discipline incidences resulted in a “suspension for one period” and 14 percent of the incidents resulted in an “off-campus suspension.”

At B-Tech, most of the suspensions resulted from a small number of students in 2007-08.

A total of 46 suspensions took place at the school, but only 21 students were involved, some of them getting repeatedly suspended.

According to the data presented by Cheung, seven students had more than one infraction, two students had eight infractions each, five Latino students were involved in 12 suspensions and two students were involved in nine infractions.

Berkeley’s self-named “renegade lunch lady,” Ann Cooper, will leave her position as Berkeley Unified School District’s nutrition services director and move to Colorado at the end of the school year to work with a school district there, Berkeley school officials confirmed Tuesday.

After hiring Cooper for a three-year term in October 2005, the district extended her contract last October.

Cooper said that her contract with the school district was up in June and that she would be working as a half-time employee until the end of the school year.

Local restaurateur Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation, which funded Cooper with a three-year grant to revamp nutritional services in the Berkeley public schools, will no longer be giving money to Berkeley’s lunch program, but Cooper said that wasn’t the reason why she was leaving.

“I am leaving because it’s time,” she said. “I finished doing what I was brought in to do and it’s time I let others do the job. We have a really good manager—Marnie Posey—and executive chef—Bonnie Chris-tensen—and the district will have to decide who will take over my role.”

Cooper also credited the rest of her staff—including her sous chefs—for their excellent work over the years.

“I only had a three-year contract and I always knew I would be leaving at some point,” said Cooper, who will be consulting with the Boulder Valley School district in Colorado and working on her nonprofit Food-Family-Farming Foundation after she takes off from Berkeley.

A press release on the website of the Boulder Valley School District—which is about four times the size of Berkeley Unified—announces its efforts to start the School Food Project, which, with the help of a $100,000 contribution from Boulder residents and district parents Robin and Kevin Luff, would fund most of the six-month consulting contract with Cooper, who heads Lunch Lessons LLC.

The community-wide effort seeks to make Boulder Valley school breakfasts and lunches healthier, not unlike what Cooper sought to do in Berkeley.

Cooper, whose lunch lessons changed cafeteria culture in the Berkeley public schools, will leave behind a legacy that involves a transfat- and frozen food-free diet of made-from-scratch meals.

When she was hired by the school district with the help of the grant from the Chez Panisse Foundation to revamp nutrition services in the schools, Cooper banned transfats, preservatives, refined flour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, white bread, generic hot dogs and hamburgers and extremely salty foods, encouraging parents and educators to buy cook and feed differently. Her efforts won her national media attention, including a profile in the New Yorker.

Cooper’s menus boasted of gourmet dishes like rotini with fresh tomato sauce and herb roasted chicken or fresh fruit and low-fat milk, meals that Berkeley Unified students had never before seen at school.

Working on a tight budget proved to be a challenge for Cooper, and she was often seen at Berkeley Board of Education meetings making her case for additional funding for staff, facilities and ingredients.

Her vision, as she stated again and again in earlier interviews with the Planet, was not only to improve the way children ate at Berkeley Unified but to create a blueprint that would change school lunches nationwide.

“We wish we could keep her forever but we always knew that she was going to leave after a while,” said Mark Coplan, the district spokesperson. “That was the plan from the very beginning.”

Coplan said that when the district’s former nutrition services director Karen Candito left to work in one of the Alameda County jails, Cooper had been working as a consultant on the School Lunch Initiative.

After she was hired, Cooper worked with a team of sous chefs and cooks to prepare hot meals for children at 16 of the city’s public schools.

Over the years, she implemented the Universal Breakfast program, which provides free breakfast for every school in Berkeley, started salad bars at all the school and a breakfast bar at Berkeley High School and most recently oversaw the opening of the $8.7 million King Dining Commons, which serves as a cafeteria for King students and the central kitchen for the entire district.

“I have really, really enjoyed Berkeley but it’s time to do something else,” she said, adding that she hoped that the food services department would be able to sustain itself by the time she left. “That’s one of the biggest things I will be working on for the remainder of the time I am here—getting kids to eat more at school.”

More than 60 UC service workers belonging to AFSCME Local 3299 took their fight for higher wages and contract renewals to the office of the chair of the UC Board of Regents, Richard Blum, in downtown San Francisco last week, leading to the arrest of at least 19 workers.

The group, angry about the lack of progress by UC executives to end poverty wages for 8,500 UC service workers after what they said was more than a year and half of negotiations, occupied Blum Capital—a San Francisco-based investment management firm headed by Blum—at 909 Montgomery Street around 9 a.m. on Jan. 16, and announced their intention not to leave until he and UC President Mark Yudof talked to the workers about raising their wages.

After parking themselves inside the office for more than 90 minutes, a small group of workers refused to leave without meeting Blum—who was not present at that point—and were arrested by the San Francisco Police Department and taken to the nearby Central Police Station. Calls to Blum at his office for comment were not returned.

Kathryn Lybarger, a gardener at UC Berkeley who took part in the demonstration, was released from police custody around 11 a.m.

“Cooks, custodians, gardeners—we have all been fighting for wages that will put us out of poverty,” she said, cheering her co-workers as they walked out from the police station after being freed. “As the economy is getting worse, it is affecting us ever harder. Ninety-six percent of the service workers are eligible for some kind of welfare, even if we work full-time. The university is paying poverty wages, even as they have given bonuses to chief executives over the last year. There’s no reason they can’t settle a contract today, and Blum has the power to make it happen.”

Lybarger, who has worked at UC Berkeley for seven years, said that although the mediator recommended by UC had made a recommendation to the university that would settle their contract, nothing had moved forward yet.

She said that the average custodian at UC Berkeley was taking home $24,000, forcing them to work two or three jobs to support their families and take care of rising grocery bills and the increasing risk of home foreclosures.

Rosa Martinez, a food service worker from UC San Diego who flew to Oakland last night with Angela Velquez, a custodian at the same university, said their low salaries were becoming a challenge for them to survive.

“The money we get is not enough to cover everything,” she said, explaining that she had to live with her son to cover her expenses. “That’s the only way I can go on.”

Velquez said that in order to provide for her two children, she had taken up another job at the Marriott Hotel in San Diego, sacrificing her weekends and holidays.

“We got a raise last year, but it’s not enough,” she said. “It continues to be a struggle.”

Five new portable classrooms will be added to the six already on the grounds of Berkeley High School by fall to combat overcrowding in the existing classrooms.

The Berkeley Board of Education last week approved a proposal by Lew Jones, the Berkeley Unified School District’s director of facilities, to allot $1.5 million for the construction of these prefabricated trailer-type structures on the high school’s softball field.

The district hired HKIT Architects for $65,000 to design and provide construction services for the portables.

Severely jammed classrooms at the high school have forced teachers to hold classes inside portables at Washington Elementary School, on the steps of the Community Theater and at times in the playgrounds outside, prompting the Berkeley Board of Education to approve around $1.7 million for six portables and four new classrooms last year that were occupied by students when school opened after Christmas break on Jan. 5.

Jones said that after studying enrollment trends at Berkeley High—projected to increase in the coming years—it was evident that it needed at least three additional portables.

The current electrical infrastructure is equipped to support up to five additional portables.

“While it is not clear that Berkeley High needs all five portables, it does not make sense to piecemeal additional portables in the following year,” Jones said. “It could very well be that the high school may be able to bring back the students at the Washington portables with the additional portables.”

Jones said that although each unit in a portable can hold up to 50 students, the district would never have classes that large.

“We are treating them just like regular classrooms at Berkeley High, so they are averaging 28 students, although a few might have around 33,” he said.

The portables come equipped with handicapped ramps and a restroom unit at the end of the run. The interiors look like regular classrooms with chairs and desks and, in some cases, computer hookups.

Berkeley Federation of Teachers Cathy Campbell said teachers were happy with the six new portables.

Jones said that the 15 new classrooms proposed for a new building—which would replace the Old Gym, as laid out in the high school’s South of Bancroft Master Plan—would be constructed at the end of 2011.

The school district does not have funds to build the new classrooms.

“Once we identify the money and finish constructing the classrooms, we will be able to remove the portables,” he said.

The first phase of the master plan—the construction of the new bleachers—is scheduled for 2010. The Old Gym is scheduled to be torn down in June 2011.

Responding to a report of an explosion, Berkeley firefighters rushed to a business in the 2800 block of Sacramento Street Friday evening to find glass on the sidewalks from windows shattered by the blast.

But the cause of the 10:14 p.m. blast wasn’t an explosive device.

“It was insect foggers,” said Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong, or “bug bombs” as they are commonly known.

Once the smoke had cleared away, firefighters found that in addition to shattering the windows, the blast had warped an interior wall and demolished to probable cause of the pyrotechnics, a refrigerator.

“People should read the instructions before they set off foggers,” said the deputy chief. “They clearly state that all ignition sources should be turned off,” including pilot lights and the triggers that fire up the condensers in refrigerators.

“I don’t know if it wiped out all the bugs they were after,” he said.

Bravest call finest

Berkeley firefighters found themselves making their own call for help Sunday morning when a brazen burglar targeted cars inside the fenced parking lot of Station 2.

An arriving firefighter was alerted to the crime when he spotted a briefcase open on the pavement inside the lot. Closer investigation revealed that a pickup’s camper shell had been damaged by a thief, who had broken both a window and a lock to get at the contents inside.

“Nothing major was taken,” said the deputy chief, “but we reminded our personnel to follow Berkeley Police recommendations not to create an opportunity for burglars by leaving valuables on display.”

Hot Starbucks

Berkeley caffeine addicts were interrupted in their quest for a morning fix when a fire broke out in an oven at the Starbucks outlet at 2224 Shattuck Ave. just before 8:40 a.m. Jan. 14.

“A full assignment of firefighters and equipment was dispatched on the report of a fire in the oven,” said Deputy Chief Dong.

The fire was already extinguished before their arrival.

“We secured the oven and evacuated the smoke,” he said. “It just goes to show you that you should always make certain to clear all the debris out of your oven before you start it up.”

A Berkeley resident, who lives on the 2000 block of Prince Street, called on Jan. 17 at 3:30 a.m. to report that somebody had broken into the basement using a door pry and taken a bicycle and a power drill. No suspects have been identified.

Strong-arm

An 18-year-old man called the Berkeley Police on Jan. 17 at 9 p.m. to report that three black men around his age had just attempted to rob him at the corner of Bancroft Way and Bonar Street. They grabbed the man's bag, tried to steal it. When the man would not give it up, they kicked him and pushed him. They took off running westbound on Bancroft Way. The suspects remain at large.

Robbery with fake gun

A 19-year-old man called on Jan. 19 at 1:54 a.m. to report that he had been robbed with a simulated gun on the 2000 block of Haste Street. The three juveniles who robbed him approached him and asked him what he had on him while one produced a simulated gun. The man took off running and accidentally dropped his i-pod. The three apparently took it, since, when he came back later to find it, it was gone. The suspects remain on the loose.

Corner fight

A 19-year-old Richmond women called on Jan. 19 at 12:01 p.m. to report that she had been battered by three other women on the corner of San Pablo and Ashby Avenue. The suspects remain at large.

“Basically, four prostitutes were having a fight over a particular corner,” said Berkeley Police Public Information Officer Andrew Frankel.

Battery

A Berkeley restaurant-goer called on Jan. 19 at 6:14 p.m. to report that he saw two men on the 2300 block of Telegraph Avenue slap and pat the buttocks of two women. Based on their reaction, the caller thought that the women did not know the men. No further suspect or victim information is available.

Opinion

Editorials

We all compared notes on when we first started to cry during the inauguration. Friends at both of the TV-watching parties I went to on Tuesday morning were well-supplied with Kleenex, luckily, since I’ve never mastered the grandmother trick of carrying a little hankie at all times. For me, it was Aretha’s hat that did it.

That hat has been waiting for 50 years to make its appearance on the steps of the Capitol. It is not only well-constructed, it’s armored against the slings and arrows of any outrages fortune might throw at it. It’s a Baptist hat, a Black Baptist hat, a hat for the ages.

The Aretha Franklin who sang wearing that amazing hat was not just the pop and feminist icon of the ’60s and ’70s. She was the proud daughter of the Reverend C.L. Franklin, pastor of one of Detroit’s major churches, and she was the spiritual descendant of the legion of African American women who have held their heads high in amazing hats on Sunday after Sunday despite weekdays filled with hard work and insults. Ladies in other denominations also wear fine hats, but the Baptists have been the recognized champions, as Aretha demonstrated so ably on Tuesday. Hats like that one haven’t been seen on the national stage before now, but their time has clearly come.

On Wednesday I was surprised to learn that my media colleague Jon Carroll had also been blown away by Aretha’s hat and what it represented. On reflection, it doesn’t seem so surprising, however, since we both grew up in Pasadena, which in the late ’50s was one of the few comfortably integrated old cities in California. Like Oakland, it was a railroad terminus, and had a strong black middle class bolstered by the good union wages of the Pullman porters. Of a Sunday, admirable hats of all kinds were to be seen on the streets of Pasadena when Jon and I lived there.

The Detroit women in the ’60s who wore Sunday hats like Aretha’s were a breed apart, however. They were tough fighters for what they knew was right, which in my work with them included not only civil rights for themselves but an end to the Vietnam war, in the middle of the decade, long before the college kids jumped on the bandwagon in 1968. Their sons were being drafted, so they marched.

We opted out of attending this inauguration in person, since we’d been to the one in 2000 and knew how cold and nasty Washington can be in January. That would be Bush II’s Inauguration I, and no, we weren’t in the reserved seats. A few of us crazy Berkeley types, furious because the election had been stolen out from under our noses, took a Southwest flight to the Baltimore airport, got rooms in a cheap motel (no competition from the Republicans for that one), rented a car to drive to the end of the Washington Metro line and schlepped our signs in to join the march on the Supreme Court. To my everlasting joy, we encountered a busload of folks from the Detroit NAACP. Two women of my own age linked arms with me so that we could keep warm, and we discovered that we’d all participated in 1963 in the same Detroit civil rights march down Woodward Avenue in Detroit which was the precursor and model for the better-known Washington march which followed.

I thought of them when someone at one of this week’s inauguration parties said excitedly that he’d been waiting a long time for this moment. How long? He’d been working for Obama for a year and a half at least, he said. Well, it’s been just about 50 years of my own life that I’ve been waiting, and some of those ladies in the splendid hats were waiting much longer than that. Aretha brought them all to the party with her.

At the pre-inauguration poetry reading at Rebecca’s Books on Monday night, a spirited standing-room-only event, one of the African American readers whose name I didn’t catch read her poem written during the primary campaign. She expressed her initial discomfort with Barack Obama as a man who did look like her, but whose cultural experience had been very different. She said she’d reconciled her feelings by remembering that he’d chosen a wife and mother for his children from among the African American descendants of slaves like herself. The Obama family pulls together all the varied fabrics of the American heritage as the patchwork quilt which the president described in his speech.

The speech itself was the best short-word speech I’ve ever heard. There are two kinds of speechs, short-word and long-word speeches. Long-word speeches, replete with fulsomely turned phrases using polysyllabic Latinate words, are designed to inspire and uplift in a general way. Short-word speeches serve as marching orders, signaling that it’s time to shift from contemplation to action.

An unreconstructed leftist of my acquaintance, spiritual kin to Katha Pollitt’s ex The Last Marxist, was heard to complain that Obama didn’t provide a laundry list of specific programs that he was going to put forward. Well, no, that wouldn’t have been suited to a largely ceremonial occasion, but by delivering a bare-bones short-word speech the president made it clear that the real work would begin very soon.

I heard some fellow called Rick opining on NPR that he himself would have written a fancier speech. He also said that it was nice that Aretha had sung “America the Beautiful” in a jazz style. Since she actually sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” with a gospel flavor, I resolved never to hire Rick to report for the Planet. The interviewer later identified “Rick” as former Clinton speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg, now a New Yorker writer and editor, so probably we won’t have to face turning him down for a job here.

Old Rick’s a pretty good writer himself, and his temptation to write a long-word speech would have been strong if he’d been working for Obama. Good short-word speeches are very hard to do well, but when they work, as this one did, they’re powerful in a way that flowery prose can never be. But they don’t provide many pull-quotes.

About the specifics: We noticed in our group that Obama promised to “forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.” That’s new, and a distinct improvement over his campaign rhetoric which spoke much more of victory, an impossible goal.

He didn’t mention Gaza, but an Israeli-American friend who keeps in touch with his old country via the Internet said that commentators there for the last two weeks have been reporting that Israeli leaders sought one more week of fighting to “clean up” Gaza, but continuing Defense Secretary Gates told them emphatically that American acquiescence to the invasion would end on Inauguration Day.

This story never made any American paper that I saw, but according to Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times, “Israel finished pulling its forces out of the Gaza Strip today, timing the withdrawal to President Obama’s first full day in office.” So it might be true.

Has the Millenium finally arrived? As we remember it, the chronological millenium came and went with no sounding of trumpets as G.W. Bush grabbed the White House.

Obama’s fully legitimate accession to the presidency will probably not produce the major transformation of society after which all things will be changed, eagerly anticipated by millenarian religious groups. At moments on Tuesday, especially as he danced with Michelle at events which looked a lot like high school proms, he looked mighty young for the job, and I remembered that he was a classmate of my daughter’s at Columbia. But he’s off to a good start. After all, it’s not that he’s young, it’s that those of us who have been fighting in the trenches for the last half-century are starting to get a bit old. I wouldn’t exactly say we could retire and let him do all the work from now on, but we might be able to kick back a little from time to time.

Public Comment

What a glorious day we lived in Richmond on Jan. 20. What formidable struggles led us to this day. Many of these struggles took place right here in Richmond.

The story of the Gary family, who in the 1950s fought against racism and housing discrimination with the support of a broad coalition, is just one of the steps along the way to President Obama’s inauguration (www.jovankabeckles.org/GARYstory.pdf ). How proud I am to be African American. How thankful I am to all those in Richmond and elsewhere who made this new era possible. The cheers and joy we shared at the Richmond Convention Center on Jan. 20 will be with us forever. I am grateful to the City of Richmond and the Neighborhood House of North Richmond for sponsoring such a wonderful celebration of unity, pride, hope, citizenship, and vision.

Now it is time to do what we were asked by our president: We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. Let us, all Americans, embrace and act locally on the duties we have to ourselves, our city, our nation, and the world.

Jovanka Beckles

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STICK TO THE FACTS ABOUT HAMAS

Editors, Daily Planet:

It is obvious from your letters column that Berkeley folk have lots of opinions about Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza. Fine. We can argue and disagree. But let’s not argue about the facts—or neglect them. Here are four indisputable facts that should help the open-minded decide whether Israel’s actions were proportionate and justified.

1. Hamas is a terrorist organization—so declared by the U.S. and the European Union, and factually demonstrable by its constant rocket attacks targeted solely at Israeli civilians. That’s the very definition of terrorism. (Ironic, isn’t it? Israel was daily condemned for targeting civilians in Gaza—which it does not purposely do—while Hamas, which openly does target civilians, gets a free pass from the international community.)

2. Hamas is dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and Jews. This is no secret: Destruction of Israel is part of the public Hamas charter. (When somebody is bombing your country with the avowed purpose of destroying you, you do what it takes to stop them. Far from being disproportionate, it would appear that Israel has not yet done enough.)

3. Hamas believes in global jihad. As a fundamentalist Islamist organization, with ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbollah and Iran, Hamas wishes to impose Shari’a—Islamic law—upon the world’s people. As such, it is the enemy of all nations that don’t subscribe to the tenets of fundamentalist Islam, including the U.S. (and Egypt and Saudi Arabia). Again, Hamas makes no secret of its jihadist mission or its list of enemies.

4. Hamas militia hide among Gaza’s civilians, risking the lives of thousands of innocent people. Hamas does not deny this tactic—indeed they revel in it, citing the willingness of Palestinians to martyr themselves for the cause. Example: An Israeli response to Hamas rocket fire last week hit a U.N.-sponsored school in Gaza and killed several people. According to the NY Times, a Palestinian witness reported that the rockets were fired just 25 yards from the school.

As obvious as these facts are, it’s astounding that the press, Daily Planet readers, many world leaders and NGOs completely ignore this reality.

Given the facts, here’s my opinion: The world would be well served if Hamas were put out of business once and for all. We can only hope that President Obama and Barbara Lee support Israel’s effort to do just that.

Jim Sinkinson

Oakland

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CHARTER SCHOOLS

Editors, Daily Planet:

It is frustrating as a liberal to read a self-identified liberal, Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O'Malley, in her Dec. 17, 2008 editorial, taking to task Arnie Kohn for his “blanket condemnation” of charter schools in an article appearing in The Nation magazine criticizing Arne Duncan, the new secretary of Education.

I believe all liberals (and many conservatives) should also hold a blanket condemnation of undemocratic charter schools.

Why don’t liberals see that charter schools are a legal entity called a corporation and thus have no requirement to be democratic? Corporations are responsible to their board of directors and their stockholders. While corporate charter schools don't have stockholders supplying cash, are they not publicly funded and privatively run?

Apparently, the editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet, and other liberals, are as blinded to these structural facts as occupants of Harry Potters' world are to his presence when blanketed by his cloak of invisibility.

And, it is ironic that O'Malley argues for holding schools and teachers accountable for students’ failure but is blind to the reality that charter schools are not held accountable for their test score successes. Because charter schools receive little or no oversight when administering their high-stakes tests, corporate charter school test scores are as problematic as banks holding subprime mortgages. Lack of testing regulation provides less than honest corporate charters with an Enron like opportunity to game the system and milk the taxpayers.

Corporate papers change the relationship of a charter school from a school directly accountable to public institutions, such as democratically elected school boards, to a school accountable to a corporate board of directors, normally appointed by the persons organizing the school.

Corporate papers legally insulate corporate charter schools from both democratic institutions and the children and parents of the neighborhood community where they reside. Corporate charter schools are a legal organization providing public funding for de-regulated private management lacking public accountability.

If you think anti-tax Republicans are ready to put taxes on the table, consider new taxes, throw in the towel, you've been drinking too much joyjuice. The GOP minority is wedded to it's "no new taxes for the rich" and could care less if millions of Californians suffer.

Anti-tax guru Grover Norquist must be smiling as his anti-tax brood of GOP politicians hold the state of California and its residents hostage once again.

Republicans have yet to publicly support any kind of realistic revenue solution that would close the $42 billion state budget deficit. Do you know the names of these GOP politicians who are gumming up the works?

California desperately needs an infusion of revenue that only taxes can bring. But, don't count on Republicans to help solve the financial crisis at hand until their feet are held to the coals.

Ron Lowe

Nevada City

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NON-BELIEVERS ACCEPTED

Editors, Daily Planet:

Although he's going to make a number of overdue positive changes, as an Obama-skeptic I'm afraid our new president will be pretty much circumscribed in the basics as a political prisoner of the military-corporate complex, the empire, and its warfare state.

Yet I was pleasantly surprised when President Obama said in his inaugural speech, "We are a nation of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers." So we non-believers are perfectly acceptable partners in the president's perspective of public inclusion.

Contrast that to the pariah status we were consigned to by President George H. W. Bush when he said, "I don't know that atheists should be accepted as citizens nor should they be regarded as patriots. This is one nation under God."

So we free thinkers, secular humanists, skeptics, agnostics and atheists have every right to hold our heads high and act as voices of reason and sanity in a world plagued by ancient superstition and irrelevant dogma that keep so many billions of our fellow humans enthralled in the intellectual middle ages.

Harry Siitonen

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ARETHA'S HAT

Editors, Daily Planet:

Much has been said and written about the spectacular hat Aretha Franklin wore at the Obama inauguration. Now that was a hat! Or should I have called it a "chapeau"? No, it was more than that. It was a bold statement: "I'm proud to be a black woman, proud to be singing at the inauguration of this country's first black president."

Watching Aretha's rousing performance, completely fascinated by the hat, I thought to myself, "Now, I've seen that hat before. But where?" Then a bulb went off in my head. Of course; I had seen that exact hat at the Berkeley Hat Co. on Telegraph Avenue, at Dwight Way. I therefore made a bee-line for the shop, and there it was—an exact duplicate. So I stopped in to talk with the owner, Carol Lipnick. She and her husband have been in business at this location for more than 30 years and are an important part of the Telegraph Avenue scene.

Carol obligingly filled me in on details of "the hat." It had been designed by a young Korean, Luk Song. Just as Michelle Obama's lovely white ball gown will undoubtedly advance the career of its designer, Jason Wu, I suspect Mr. Song's reputation as a creator of sensational hats will also take off.

Dorothy Snodgrass

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FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

Editors, Daily Planet:

Last week, state Sen. Loni Hancock invited public suggestions regarding the California Senate Committee on Food and Agriculture. On Jan. 12, the San Francisco Chronicle had a story entitled, "Business souring fast in state's dairy industry." Yesterday, a close relative informed me his wife has breast cancer, and will undergo surgery after a few months of chemotherapy.

It is very sad when people feel it is easier to remove body parts than to remove animal protein from their diet. Sadly, cancer is mostly a lifestyle choice, like so many other major diseases and early deaths by "natural causes."

Raising animals is an inefficient, heavily subsidized business, which depletes water and topsoil, pollutes our waterways, is a major source of global warming, and makes universal healthcare very expensive. Please take every possible step to remove animal-farming subsidies from our state budget.

Months ago, a Berkeley Daily Planet letter-writer suggested the profitable petroleum industry should bail-out the auto makers. Similarly, let the profitable benefactors of the cholesterol-clogging animal-protein business bail-out their upstream farm partners. How many erectile dysfunction and other drug commercials must Americans endure?

Mitch Cohen

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CITY MANAGER'S RAISE

Editors, Daily Planet:

At a time when everyone in the private sector is tightening their belts, and Berkeley looming budget cuts, why is it appropriate to throw money at Berkeley's city manager, one of its highest-paid employees??= Has he threatened to resign unless he's paid more? If he did resign, would Berkeley be unable to fill his position with a qualified replacement at his current salary?

Before the City Council approves or denies the mayor's request to pay the city manager more, I suggest the city auditor (not the city's personnel department, which reports to the city manager, raising the potential for a conflict of interest) answer the following question: How many qualified candidates for city manager were other cities in the Bay Area able to attract, offering the same or less pay than Berkeley does? That should more accurately tell the city council whether the city manager's current salary is adequate.

Keith Winnard

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LIMBAUGH IS A TOOL

Editors, Daily Planet:

Obama doesn't care if he's doing Rush Limbaugh a favor by citing his "I hope he fails" quote. We forget that Limbaugh was just a crazy-right freakshow until President* Bush's election forced us to take Limbaugh seriously, just like it opened up space for Ann Coulter to perform. He doesn't represent Republican strategic thinking. Obama is using him to embarrass Senate Republicans, like he used Bush on McCain (but not necessarily to beat them in the next election, just to raise that specter to encourage some of them to behave).

The only President to seriously misunderestimate Limbaugh was Bush's father, who carried Limbaugh's bags to the Lincoln Bedroom when he had him over during his re-election campaign. Limbaugh toadied to Bush until he lost, and then gleefully reported how mortified he had been to see the President doing the labor of servants.

As to the sweet squabble between Bonnie Hughes and Dorothy Bryant (both powerful Berkeley personages) about the Brit influence on us, let me just say, with lowered eyes, that both of them are correct; that is possible. But it raises for me an unmentionable truth about the intellectual Brits. And that is that they are incredibly intelligent; they are superbly articulate; they astound me with their rhetoric; and let’s face it, their colleges—Cambridge, Oxford, etc.—produce graduates who are vastly superior to ours. Just watch “Prime Ministers Questions,” for example, and try, unsuccessfully, to fight off an inferiority complex about our Congress. Sorry to be an Anglophile, but it’s the pachyderm in the foyer, to put it elegantly,

Robert Blau

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HELIOS

Editors, Daily Planet:

In this day of the Internet and instant messaging, the argument that EBI must be near the main UC campus to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations is clearly without merit.

Jerry Landis

•

CRITICISM

Editors, Daily Planet:

“Why does Mr. Mitchell feel that artists must be removed in order for this area to thrive?” So asks Rikki Gill of the Berkeley Potter’s Guild, in a Jan. 15 letter to the editor.

Ms. Gill is referring to a recent commentary I wrote for the Planet on economic development in Berkeley. I would like to correct the record: Never, in my commentary or anywhere else, have I said any such a thing.

I don’t mind criticism. But please don’t make stuff up.

Russ Mitchell

•

THE BUSH RECORD

Editors, Daily Planet:

Bush and Cheney have both used the fact of no terrorist attacks on the United States in over seven years since 9/11 as major proof of their success in office.

Why would the terrorists return here to attack us when we have sent them thousands of our U.S. military personnel to be conveniently killed over there?

Gerta Farber

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BART SAFETY

Editors, Daily Planet:

I am not a black man. I am a white woman who rides BART and I fear for my life now in the aftermath of the killing of unarmed Oscar Grant. It is clear now that BART police armed with guns are a threat to the BART-riding public.

Whether passengers are on trains or waiting for trains, the public is at risk of a BART police officer shooting off his gun in our midst. It is very evident from the Oscar Grant killing that BART police don’t care who’s around when they shoot their guns.

In the name of public safety, BART police should not carry guns.

I wonder if the Bay Area anti-war movement aka the peace movement might take a moment from protesting the Gaza invasion and two U.S. wars to consider focusing some of their attention behind this simple proposal of disarming BART cops to make the Bay Area safer and more nonviolent. No more Oscar Grants or anybody else.

Maris Arnold

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BERKELEY 1969, OAKLAND 2009

Editors, Daily Planet:

The year 1969 was our first full year living in Berkeley. There were many “peaceful” demonstrations and we learned to stay away from downtown Berkeley when a demonstration was scheduled. Some of these turned ugly with windows broken, fires set in stores, cars overturned etc. The trashings were predictable then as they are now, and cities don’t manage these events any better with the procedures and resources they are willing to use.

Robert Chioino

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40 YEARS OF PEOPLE’S PARK

Editors, Daily Planet:

Admittedly I was only 5 years old at the time when people of all walks of life in our community came together and told the powers that be, the unelected and appointed, that this will be open space, in perpetuity. Those that, until this point, were unopposed, did not take this lightly. They sent in tanks and the National Guard and wrapped barbed wire around the pleasure of the elite. It cost one life outright and dozens of our citizens sent to area hospitals, shot-gunned by the police. Retiring Alameda County Sheriff Charles Plummer stated that his only regret in life is that he “didn’t hit the rioters harder.” Our local “Bull” Connor hung in much longer than his brothers in the south. But People’s Park has out lasted even he, and celebrates it’s 40th anniversary April 26.

This is a place that means so many different things to so many different people that we are calling out to you all to join us in a week or remembrances culminating in a Anniversary Concert on April 26. Stake your claim on the memories of the park. Join the People’s Park Anniversary Committee in celebrating 40 years of diverse history (herstory) as only Berkeley can.

Our next two meetings will be held at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. on Sunday Jan. 25 at noon. and Sunday Feb. 8 at noon. Bring something to share if you like, but it is your ideas and energy that the group is most interested in. For more information call 390-0830.

Sunlight Starsurfer

People’s Park 40th Anniversary

Committee

Dan McMullan

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CALIFORNIA HALL OF FAME

Editors, Daily Planet:

Kudos to Dick Bagwell for throwing more light on Julia Morgan on the occasion of her induction into the California Hall Of Fame (one of Maria Schriver’s good ideas that she got her governor/husband to support). Bagwell notes that the 2008 inductees included others with strong ties to the Bay Area—Leland Stanford, Dave Brubeck and Alice Waters. But there’s more!

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne was born in San Francisco and spent most of his teenage years and young adult life in Berkeley and Oakland, starting his first back yard gym in his family home on Spaulding Avenue in Berkeley, starring at quarterback for the Berkeley High football team, and opening his first “Physical Culture Studio” in 1936 on 16th and Telegraph in Oakland. Most importantly, he underwent his transformation from scrawny, pimply kid to barrel-chested icon of health as a 15-year-old in 1929 while living on Spaulding Avenue.

Another inductee, Robert Graham, the Mexican-born sculptor, received his formal training at San Jose State College and the San Francisco Art Institute. Graham died recently; he was married to Angelica Huston, who had a high profile relationship for years with another inductee, Jack Nicholson. One of the other inductees, Linus Pauling, had an institute in Menlo Park during the last 20 years of his life that was devoted to the study of Vitamin C.

And finally, inductee Jane Fonda had some formative experiences in the East Bay in the early 1970s, hooking up there with Tom Hayden (along with Robert Scheer and Ann Weills) at the radical Red Family collective on Bateman Street in Berkeley while her daughter Vanessa attended the collective’s Blue Fairyland Nursery school, and while she made the movie Steelyard Blues with Donald Sutherland and Peter Boyle in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Rosa.

Hal Reynolds

McGee, Spaulding, Hardy Historical Interest Group

•

SIN OF OMISSION

Editors, Daily Planet:

Two years ago Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency. She wasted no time telling the public at large and her San Francisco constituency clamoring for Bush’s ouster that “impeachment is off the table.” In so doing she committed a sin of omission because she has a sworn duty to seek accountability from abusers of the Constitution and she declared that she would not. It is now too late for her to reverse her position. However, it’s never too late to call members of the Bush administration to account for criminal abuses of power.

President Obama, having acknowledged a week ago that no one is above the law, said “…we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” This seems to mean that he intends to let bygones be bygones, a la Pelosi. If so, and he does not move to initiate an inquiry, investigation, inquest or some procedure for putting facts on the table from which Speaker Pelosi removed impeachment, he will himself be complicit in the criminal abuses of the last eight years. And his sin will be worse than Pelosi’s because he swore on the Lincoln Bible in the presence of two million people, witnessed on TV by many millions more here and around the world, “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution…”

Thus, our new president is in a bind. If he does nothing it implies that top White House officials including himself are above the law.

Marvin Chachere

San Pablo

•

GAZA

Editors, Daily Planet:

Some thoughts about Gaza:

“Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” —Rabbi Hillel.

“Let your neighbor’s dignity be as precious to you as your own.”—Rabbi Eliezer.

Israel can’t be both David and Goliath at the same time, the perpetual victim and the persecutor.

Shame!

When I was a little girl I contributed my nickels, each a leaf on a tree to be planted in Israel. Now Palestinian olive trees are being uprooted. Israel. I want my nickels back.

Language note: If anyone calls you a self-hating Jew or an anti-Semite for opposing the policies of the Israeli government, tell that person as politely as possible that the correct word is “mensch.”

(Note to the yiddish-challenged: “Mensch,” original meaning “man,” has come to mean an individual of any gender who possesses the character and strength to do and say what’s right, no matter what.)

Ruth Bird

•

ISRAEL AND THE PLANET

Editors, Daily Planet:

I recently told my good little friend Israel that the Planet doesn’t like the way he’s been acting up lately. Really? Israel sulked, but with little apparent surprise or interest. Well, I explained, the Planet thinks your tantrums are just way out of line. The Planet says you’re always “overreacting” and just generally being a royal pain in the tush. So, Israel wondered, “How does this ‘Planet’ of yours think we should react when some bully tries to kick sand in our face or push us out of the sandlot? Remember, this is Mr. Arafat’s neighborhood here, not the Mr. Roger’s neighborhood you grew up with on Public Television which primarily formed your worldview.” Well, I explained calmly (you know how hysterical Israel becomes whenever he feels cornered or picked on unfairly), first you need to go back into your own little Zionist corner of the sandbox, take a deep breath, maybe take a little calming pill and then have a big, long time out to calm down. Adults at the Planet call this a “truce.” Then, when your blood sugar’s dropped enough, ask yourself, “Why have I been acting up so much lately? Why do I feel so insecure? Why can’t I just be nice to everyone else?”

Now, Israel, I know you think you’re special or something, but you need to see some real consequences for being such a bad boy and upsetting the whole playground. Don’t you know, the whole Planet’s mad at you now? Israel shrugged with indifference as if to say, “So? What else is new?” I continued, “Well, Israel, since you’ve been such a very bad boy, the Planet says you should be grounded for a long time, lose all of your special privileges, plus all of your generous allowance money we give you every month.” Israel stuck his tongue out at me. “Israel!” I scolded. “That’s not a good start.”

In fact, the Planet thinks next time you get really mad at someone you need to learn better conflict resolution skills. If you think someone is picking on you unfairly, the best thing to do is to roll over and play dead, turn the other cheek and graciously offer your back side for a nice series of hard kicks in the rear end until a mature adult like our dear friends at the United Nations (who, after all, represent the Planet) can help you work out your issues. “A kick in the rear end?” Israel lashed out again. “We’ve been kicked in the rear end now almost every day for eight years. Our bottom is getting really sore. Isn’t it about time we fought back a little?” Israel was still sassing back at me. This wasn’t a promising new start. “Now, now, Israel!” I calmly intoned. “Don’t get all in a huff again! You were just starting to calm down there. I know you feel like no one likes you very much or cares what happens to you. But it’s still not okay for you to pick a fight with others. The Planet is the adult here. The Planet will decide how to make sure everything is fair and just. Just calmly follow the Planet’s orders and we’ll arrive at a final solution to all your problems before you can shout ‘am Yisrael chai’.”

Israel seemed deeply suspicious of this Planet and its “goodwill.” “What Planet do you come from again?” Israel suddenly demanded. Sorry, I thought that was clear from the start. I’m from “The Berkeley Daily Planet.” That’s my Planet. Israel suddenly burst into a horse laugh which startled me. It sounded almost like the rapid fire staccato of a machinegun. Then he shoved me away with defiance gleaming in his eyes and flashed both his middle fingers at me before he swaggered back over to assume his roost at the top of the play structure.

It’s time to take a look at the charette’s results. The team of 21 representatives (BUSD architects, sports field specialist, staff, warm water pool swimmers and community members) meet to review the Berkeley High School South of Bancroft Master Plan and the adaptive re-use and rehabilitation of the BHS original gym, including the warm water pool.

The plan was driven by the need to enlarge the girls Title IX softball field from 180 feet to 250 feet. This was the determining factor for demolishing the original gym and pools. Fortunately, the field can be expanded to meet BHS’s needs while changing the orientation of the filed so the sun doesn’t blind the batter!

Derby Fields was being designed at the same time the plan was developed. It too will have the baseball field and basketball courts identified as a need in the BHS Master Plan. Additionally, the Gilman and Bates sports fields, San Pablo Park, Grove Park and West Campus baseball fields are resources too. The BHS campus also has basketball facilities in the Donoghue and E buildings.

While classroom space was tercery in the plan, identifying the need for five to 10, 18 have been put into the new design! The revised plan also includes outdoor and indoor flexible sports space, outdoor basketball courts, restoring the basketball court to it’s original glory, complete with seating and a higher ceiling to meet volleyball players needs, and additional classroom, office, conference rooms and storage. The proposed new building would be approximately half as large—not meeting many of the original needs.

The landmarking of the building has made federal, state and private funding available for the rehabilitation of the building. FEMA funds are now available to rebuild the building should it be damaged in a natural disaster.

As stated by Henrik Bull, a founder of Bull, Allen and Stockwell Architectural firm and Berkeley resident, “Preservation of buildings can be thought of as the ultimate recycling. Buildings are vast repositories of energy. It takes energy to manufacture or extract building materials, more energy to transport them to the construction site and still more energy to assemble them into a building. If the structure is demolished and landfilled, the locked up energy is totally wasted! The demolition itself uses more energy, and of course, the construction of a new building uses yet more.”

Using formulas produced by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the old gymnasium building of 88,000 square feet, embodies the energy equivalent of 1.12 million gallons of gasoline, and the demolition would create about 7,000 tons of waste, enough to fill 45 railroad cars, which would stretch almost a half a mile.

A new building would require more energy and would use more natural resources, releasing more pollutants and greenhouse gases into the environment. Based on recent studies, even with new buildings designed to the highest energy conservation standards, it would take at least fifty years to recover the energy lost in the demolition of the original gym and pools.

The building is not scheduled for demolition until 2011. There is time to consider another approach, which can save money, time, energy and natural resources. It would be a truly green solution. Now, that we know that the programmatic needs can be meet, it’s time for the BUSD to move forward with a cost analysis to rehabilitate the building.

Recently I had a chance to revisit Chicago and marvel at her waterfront: Lincoln Park, Grant Park, Burnham Park—miles of waterfront parks accessible to all Chicagoans. Then I learned on an architectural boat trip on the Chicago River that the waterfront park system was due mainly to the vision and courage of one man, Montgomery Ward.

In 1835-36 the city fathers deeded the lakefront land as “Public Ground—Commons to Remain Forever Open, Clear, and Free of Any Buildings, or Other Obstruction Whatever.” As the city grew there was a great demand both by the government and developers to develop the lakefront, but Montgomery Ward filed four lawsuits between 1890-1911 and succeeded in keeping the lakefront as a Public Commons. Now Chicago benefits from his courage and vision and perseverance. The lakefront parks add immeasurably to the quality of life for Chicagoans. In 2004, Chicago went one better by converting an unsightly old railroad yard into a world-class destination, Millennium Park.

Oakland is also blessed with a world-class waterfront: 64 acres of public land part of which is Tideland Trust land on the estuary. Citizens of Oakland formulated the Estuary Policy Plan to make this into a Public Commons that could be shared and enjoyed by all. In 2003 Oakland voters passed measure DD, a park bond, by an 80 percent margin. One of its purposes was to begin implementation of the Estuary Policy Plan.

But these citizens’ efforts were co-opted by Senate Pro-tem Don Perata who steered legislation SB1622 to strip the Tidelands Trust land designation from the 64-acre parcel. Then the Oakland City Council passed an ordinance to sell the 64 acres to a developer for a mere 18 million dollars.

The project not only sets aside the carefully drafted Estuary Policy Plan that was approved unanimously in 1999 by the then sitting City Council, it is a public rip-off of historic proportions. Which is why, in a burst of community fervor, a group of citizens mobilized to petition for a referendum. Twenty-five thousand and eighty-six signatures were collected which would have permitted citizens to vote on the matter.

However, the city attorney thwarted the citizens’ efforts. He first disqualified the petition claiming that the ordinance that the petitioners used was invalid, even though it was taken from the official city site. Then the city attorney claimed that the petition was invalid because non-residents gathered some of the signatures, although statutes requiring that the circulator of a city referendum be resident and eligible to vote in the city were subsequently found unconstitutional by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in a similar case in San Clemente.

The citizens of Oakland had a vision for the Oak to Ninth. They voted for Measure DD by an overwhelming margin, and 25,086 citizens signed the referendum petition; however, they have been thwarted by their own elected officials.

Oakland desperately needs leadership, such as shown by Montgomery Ward, which has the vision and courage to bring the Estuary Policy Plan to fruition.

If we allow the current Oak-to-Ninth development proposal to go forward, with 3,100 condominium units on the last of Oakland’s waterfront, our city will indeed become a place about which has been famously said, “There is no there there.”

Berkeley Councilmember Linda Maio and Bay Area Air Quality Management District Executive Director Jack Broadbent’s Jan. 7 letters to the editor demonstrate their willingness to deny the seriousness of the air pollution in Berkeley schools and neighborhoods. Immediately taking a defensive stance instead of resolving to research and resolve the problem (unlike public officials in other states cited in the articles), both Maio and Broadbent argue that the recent USA Today report is based on flawed data. This is not true.

In my correspondence with USA Today reporter Blake Morrison about Mr. Broadbent’s letter, Mr. Morrison states that “Mr. Broadbent appears to misunderstand how we used TRI.” Mr. Morrison notes that the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data was not used by USA Today for risk assessment, but rather risk screening. Furthermore, USA Today consulted with the EPA to make sure they used the TRI data correctly, specifically working with EPA official Nick Bouwes, who actually developed the model.

Mr. Broadbent tries to bolster his criticism of the USA Today study by suggesting that the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) believes the TRI data to be invalid and inaccurate. Mr. Broadbent is wrong. In my correspondence with Professor Michael Ash, a representative of PERI, about Mr. Broadbent’s letter, Dr. Ash notes that “Mr. Broadbent has inaccurately characterized our discussion of the accuracy of the RSEI data.” (The RSEI data is based the underlying TRI data.) On the contrary, Dr. Ash believes that the data used in the USA Today study is “unbiased” and a “best-practice screening system for community exposure to airborne industrial toxics.” He further notes that the data has been extensively peer reviewed by the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, and that PERI specifically endorses how USA Today has used the data in their study.

It is alarming that the first, apparently knee-jerk response of Maio and Broadbent to the USA Today study is to criticize the findings. Sadly, however, this appears consistent with their policies over the years that have lent support to largest polluter in Berkeley, as cited in the USA Today report, Pacific Steel Casting (PSC). PSC has a long, well-documented history of emitting large amounts of toxins into the air, including manganese, a metal known to cause major health problems in children, including cancer, birth defects, asthma, and IQ deficiencies. Mayor Tom Bates, Maio, and Broadbent have failed to protect Berkeley children and citizens on their watch. Now, as they are exposed, they are pretending that no problem exists and hoping that we buy it. Berkeley deserves better.

My family showed me Martin Luther King, Jr. as if he were reflected in a racist fun-house mirror, but the traditional view of MLK taught at my public high school and reinforced in mainstream media also misrepresents King’s multifaceted contribution. The circumscribed tale of MLK’s civil rights journey from the bus boycott to the civil rights bills implies that racism was essentially eradicated and downplays his increasing focus on class and poverty as well as his criticism of the Vietnam war. This congratulatory narrative remains more palatable to those uninterested in confronting more subtle contemporary racism, and reassures elites interested in maintaining the status quo regarding the economy and foreign policy, while depriving those working for social justice of a historically meaningful portrait.

The bowdlerized picture of King that I absorbed as a child must have been similarly comforting to my family. I will never forget my mother recounting her outrage about MLK’s assassination, outrage that riots erupted because “they riot about everything,” giving me the impression that black riots were a sort of mass temper tantrum. History class left the impression that racism essentially ended with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, so the riots remained inexplicable. I later came to understand the substantive reasons for the collective outbursts of rage, and it was an epiphany when I discovered that race riots historically involved white vigilantes marauding in black neighborhoods. Whites often rioted and lynched during Jim Crow, notably in the 1908 Springfield riot which was so shocking it spurred some whites to support the formation of the NAACP. Most shockingly during the Red Summer of 1919 more than a few returning black soldiers, some still in their uniforms, were lynched.

My mother raised me in Florida and she would have had to look no further than the black town of Rosewood, where white Floridians rioted in 1923 destroying almost the entire town and killing countless residents. More recently, when Mom was a teenager, a small-scale riot erupted in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after King was arrested for demanding service at a segregated restaurant, and segregationists subsequently attacked his supporters. So it was this legacy of terrorism and vigilantism, not to mention slavery, in conjunction with myriad ongoing injustices that constituted the “everything” my mother dismissed.

My stepfather once flabbergasted me by claiming “Martin Luther King was a communist,” but I was dumbstruck when I learned he was merely echoing J. Edgar Hoover’s assertion in November 1964 that King’s SCLC was “spearheaded by Communists.” As an adult I discovered that Communists during the inter-war period were indeed in the vanguard of the struggle for racial justice, most famously by championing the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. Many progressives had been involved with the Communist Party, notably A. Philip Randolph, who later played a key role in the Montgomery bus boycott, and Bayard Rustin, who demonstrated his genius organizing the March on Washington. But after the revelations of Stalin’s mass-killings American progressives distanced themselves from the Party, and despite the segregationist mantra that civil rights advocates were at best Communist sympathizers, even the FBI eventually concluded that the civil rights movement was not directed by Moscow. Yet Hoover’s assessment could not have improved after King first publicly criticized the Vietnam War in August 1965 and further denounced it in February 1967. Then on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his assassination, King delivered his famous “Beyond Vietnam” address, calling the U. S. government ”the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” thus cementing his reputation with my stepfather.

Arguably the least acknowledged aspect of King’s life involves the national security apparatus targeting him for surveillance, infiltration, disinformation and disruption. On October 10, 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the Justice Department to wiretap MLK’s home phone, SCLC phones, and the phones of close friends and advisers. The FBI also used hidden microphones in King’s motel rooms to gather evidence of adultery and subsequently tried to blackmail him. By spreading disinformation to churches, universities, media, and government officials, the FBI sought to discredit King and intimidate his funders. The government began running large-scale domestic counter-intelligence programs in 1957, and in August 1967 the FBI initiated COINTELPRO Black Nationalist-Hate groups. This program sought to “neutralize” these groups and included “intensified attention” to King’s SCLC. As early as 1963 the FBI called King “the most dangerous... Negro leader” and initiated counter-intelligence programs against King when he was still narrowly focused on fighting segregation and disenfranchisement, thus raising questions about how civil rights endangered national security.

My family’s impressions aside, high school teachers, pundits and scholars embraced Martin Luther King’s civil rights victories in the South. This narrative is easily compartmentalized into celebratory curricula and encapsulated in feel-good news spots. Although often delaying and seeking to restrain King, the government ultimately gave its imprimatur to MLK’s civil rights work especially when juxtaposed to the militant alternative. With the government consistently sanctioning King’s approach relative to the militants, in conjunction with media outside the South reporting and editorializing favorably, public opinion too came to support this perspective. Historians naturally take account of this mainstream view and so King is remembered only as the champion of civil rights. But when confronted by recalcitrant problems in the North and the inertia of the Vietnam war, King largely failed or managed only marginal victories, and these incomplete results to more complex problems do not lend themselves to heroic portrayal in textbooks and retrospectives. The circumscribed version of MLK sanitizes the historical record of valuable lessons for those working for economic justice and a humane foreign policy, and is arguably as distorted as the Martin Luther King seen through my family’s racist prism.

The most important thing of all is the unfettered flow of radical information, culture, arts, news and politics that you get here on KPFA.

—Sasha Lilley, Interim Program Director, on KPFA, May 20 during a fund drive

I happen to agree with the above statement. It fits right in with our bylaws: Article One, Section 2, in part: “In radio broadcasting operations to promote the full distribution of public information… .”

Unfortunately, for the current concerned listener administration, it is only sales talk. As I pointed out in previous commentaries in the Berkeley Daily Planet, the CL/Rijio administration has quietly been selling important speeches and public affairs programs that they do not play on the air for all to hear! I have no problem with selling as many as possible, as long as they are played on the air for all to hear, which is our mission.

In the online version of this commentary you will find a partial list of these speeches and programs. During a fund drive the Morning Show folks proudly proclaimed three times during the pitching, “The Great and Mighty Walk was not available anywhere else.” I easily found it on the web and purchased a copy for a third of KPFA’s price. The entire program has never been played on the air, like those on the back page! Shouldn’t honesty to our listeners be a fundamental principle at KPFA/Pacifica?

I have a simple solution for the problem of getting them on the air. We have four music programs on Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m. To free up a two-hour time slot to play these programs, Tuesday or Wednesday could be freed up for public affairs by either the Monday and Tuesday programs or the Wednesday and Thursday programs alternating every other week on one night. This way we could have an interesting weekly program with speeches and public affairs available for our audience to sit down in their comfortable chairs and listen to after dinner. It could also be used for hot topics when they come up, like police shootings, invasion of Gaza, etc. I will gladly volunteer to help put it together.

When we don’t have any current programs and catch up with the backlog, we could play something topical from the Archives (police brutality, Palestine, etc.) or have a political discussion time for callers, similar to Air America, so our listeners could share their ideas with each other about current topics. Having these speeches and programs on will increase loyalty and thus donations. It will put some excitement on the air. It would also bring back subscribers we have lost.

Then we will be able to say on the air what Sasha Lilley is quoted as saying above, and it will be an honest statement, not a sales pitch to get you to buy something that should be played for all to hear. We won’t have two classes of listeners: those that can afford to spend hundreds of dollars to hear speeches and programs and those that can’t and don’t get to hear them. This change will be in line with Pacifica’s goal to have a diverse audience. Low-income people are more oppressed by injustice in our society and need to know who is doing it to them and what they can do to fight back. Also low-income people are more proportionally women and people of color. We should want all these folks to be loyal listeners and not be priced out of important programs and resentful.

Please tell management that KPFA must be honest to its listeners and play programs for all to hear, regardless of wealth: (510) 848-6767 ext. 3 or www.kpfa.org/contactus.

KPFA PREMIUMS: must buy to hear! (Is this part of our mission?)

Tariq Ali Berkeley 2008

Naomi Wolf Berkeley 2008

Robert Fisk 2008

Vandana Shiva

Noam Chomsky 2008

Deep Sports Dave Zirin & Michael Lewis Berkeley 2007

Thomas Frank Berkeley 2008

Michael Eric Dyson 2007

Winona La Duke Green festival 2008

George Lakoff In Santa Monica

Michael Eric Dyson 2008

Gallagher v. Hitchins Debate

Howard Zinn 2007

Naomi Klein Financial Crisis

God is Great Debate 2007

911 Forum

David Harvey’s Marx on Capital, free on line, $ 250 from KPFA

Rachel Corrie Speaks 2007

Take Back America Conference 5 CDs

Derrick Jensen “Now this war has two sides.” 2 CDs

Steve Bezruchka “Is America Driving You Crazy”

Steve Bezruchka “Health & Wealth”

Michael Klare

Maude Barlow

Erwin Chemerinsky debates John Yoo 2 CDs

Naomi Klein and Tariq Ali at Left Forum

Left Forum Opening and Closing Plenaries

Michael Meade “The World behind the World”

Karen Armstrong “Understanding Islam and the West”

Isabel Allende At Dominican University

Dr Joy Degruy Leary “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”

Jack Rasmus Financial Crisis in America; Global Context

Harry Belefonte – Commeration of 40th Anniversary 1968

Van Jones Speaking in Oakland

Amy Goodman at 2008 Green Festival

Robert Scheer in LA

Brecht Forum with Tariq Ali

Susan George Neoliberalism

Ethics of Synthetic Biology

Rumi 800 Birthday 2007 2 CDs

As far as I know, none of the programs listed in the online version of this commentary has been completely played and the program promoted on the air for all to hear. They have all been sold. It is only a partial list. How many of these would you have liked to hear? Do you feel cheated? Does this build a loyal audience? The years 2003 to 2008 saw a 50 percent increase in paid staff and 5,000 lost subscribers. For more information go to www.Peoplesradio.net.

Richard Phelps is a former chair of the KPFA LSB, 34-year listener-subscriber, and a former AM and FM radio announcer.

Olivia Caldwell is a young, single mother who lives in Oakland, a city wracked by unemployment, foreclosures, escalating high school dropout rates, and violent crime. Olivia herself served time for petty theft.

When she was released from prison, she joined Oakland’s Green Jobs Corps, an experimental project that changed her life. Backed by local trade unions and community colleges, 40 paid trainees were prepared for green construction jobs, primarily in solar panel installation. The program worked, and today, small as it may be in size, it is a microcosm for the future.

Because trainees and workers come from low-income communities, the Green Job Corps offers a pathway out of poverty. As Mayor Ron Dellums put it: “This is an extraordinary effort. Elegant in its simplicity and embrace. You can fight pollution and poverty simultaneously.”

The Green Job Corps began at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, inspired by Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy (Harper Collins, 2008). Green collar jobs are “career track jobs,” says Van Jones. They’re family-supporting gigs that contribute to preserving and enhancing the environment. Installation of solar panels, construction and maintenance of wind turbines, urban agriculture, tree planting in cities, weatherization and retrofitting of buildings, remediation of brownfields (cleaning up abandoned, often-contaminated industrial sites), recycling and reuse of materials—these are jobs that generate local revenue, save energy, clean the environment, and cannot be exported. For the first time in their lives, many impoverished youth are gaining a tangible stake in climate solutions.

“We want the federal government to buy into what is taking place here in Oakland,” said Representative Barbara Lee. “Once the federal government buys in, I believe our nation can see what can be done. We must go green.”

She may get her wish. Oakland is not alone. A green-the-ghetto movement is already growing from the bottom up in other “inner cities”—like the South Bronx, the birthplace of break-dancing, graffiti, rap music—Hip Hop’s irrepressible culture.

The South Bronx is an environmental calamity, the poorest Congressional district in the United States. New York City transfers 40 percent of its waste into the South Bronx. Dissected by three unwanted thruways, the borough encompasses a sludge plant, four power plants, and has the lowest park-people-ratio in New York City.

South Bronx environmental activist Majora Carter, a co-founder with Van Jones of Green for All, told CNN recently: “If power plants, waste handling, chemical plants and transport systems were located in wealthy areas as quickly and easily as in poor areas, we would have had a clean, green economy decades ago.”

A few years ago Carter leveraged a $10,000 grant into a $3 million 11-mile waterfront park. “Green.” said Carter in a recent address (Al Gore was sitting in the front row), “Green is the new Black.” Carter is executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization that alleviates poverty through environmental projects. Her Stewardship Training program moves the poor, especially youth, into living-wage green-collar jobs. Many of the students have prison records or were previously on public assistance. Therein is the premise of the burgeoning green economy. Nothing is wasted. All human energy is renewable. According to Carter, 85 percent of trainees and workers in the four-year program land steady green jobs from urban agriculture to green-roof installation and maintenance.

In 2007, without much fanfare, Congress enacted a Green Jobs Act, providing a modest amount of money—$125 million—for workforce training in the clean energy sector. The bill provides training for at-risk youth, ex-prisoners, returning veterans, and families that fall well below the poverty line.

And now, at long last, the president is an environmentalist. His clean energy agenda calls for five million green jobs in the next 10 years. Last week Obama picked Hilda Solis, who authored the Green Jobs Act, for Secretary of Labor.

The environmental movement today is more inclusive, more economically savvy, than the conservation movements of the past. For many decades the environmental movement in the U.S. lacked a practical economic agenda. Oil and auto industries dominated elections by convincing voters that environmentalism threatens jobs and economic stability. The oil industry even convinced the AFL-CIO to lobby against the Kyoto Protocol.

Now the tables are turned. Far from threatening jobs, the environmental agenda actually constitutes the only practical, sustainable means for long-term economic revival. That was the message of Van Jones in his Congressional testimony January 15, 2009.

Jones’ The Green Collar Economy may well become the most influential resource for the Obama administration.

Labor, after all, is a renewable source of energy. And we cannot harness the geothermal energy of the inner earth, or the powers of the wind and sun, until we also harness the untapped creativity and yearnings of the poor, who still (43 years after the promise of the Great Society) languish in ghettos, barrios and reservations of misery and neglect.

The Green Jobs Corps connects America’s poor to the noblest aim of our generation: the restoration of nature’s ecosystems, the fragile networks of mutuality that sustain all life.

Last week Rep. Barbara Lee issued a press release about the situation in Gaza. “I mourn the tragic loss of innocent lives in Gaza and Southern Israel, and am deeply concerned by the ongoing and escalating humanitarian crisis,” it began. The statement went on to call for an immediate ceasefire and for intensive U.S. efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and to promote a two-state solution.

While condemning Hamas for its rocket attacks, it also included unmistakable criticism of Israel’s response: “military actions will not resolve the conflict, restore the peace, or end the violence. They are more likely to set in motion another tragic cycle of death, destruction, and deprivation.”

Of course, the statement left out a lot: It made no mention, for example, of the brutal blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza for years, nor of the land theft and settlements on the West Bank that have made a two-state solution all but impossible. And it ignored the root cause of the whole conflict, the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make room for a Jewish ethnocracy.

By the standards of mainstream American political discourse, however, the statement was downright decent.

The problem is that it didn’t come out until Jan. 15; until then, Lee had made no public statement about the Gaza onslaught. When she finally issued it, the war had already raged for 20 days, and the Palestinian death toll had topped 1,000, including more than 300 children. By then even two of the three key planners of the war—Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni —were openly calling for a ceasefire; only lame-duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was holding out for more death and destruction. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN officials from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on down had denounced Israel’s tactics; the President of the General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, had called the attack “genocide.” Nine major Israeli human-rights groups had already accused their own government of war crimes.

Here in the U.S., 500 rabbis had already signed a full-page ad in the New York Times demanding a ceasefire, and thousands of Ms. Lee’s constituents and other Americans—including many Jews—had called, petitioned, marched, and sat in to protest the Israeli attack.

In short, Barbara Lee’s call for a cease-fire, welcome as it was, hardly represented the kind of moral and political leadership we expect from her. She was simply catching up—barely and belatedly—with progressive opinion at home and abroad.

In fact, she wasn’t even keeping pace with the best of her House colleagues. Rep. Dennis Kucinich had denounced Israel’s “disproportionate response” from the very beginning of the war. When he introduced a resolution detailing some of the destruction, quoting pertinent passages of the 4th Geneva Convention, and demanding an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza, eight House colleagues, including Lynne Woolsey of Marin, Dianne Watson of Los Angeles, and John Conyers of Detroit, had the guts to sign on as co-sponsors. Where was Ms. Lee? AWOL.

She had displayed similar reticence the week before, when the House took up a resolution—sponsored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but undoubtedly drafted by AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or some other branch of the Zionist lobby—one-sidedly denouncing Hamas and offering uncritical support to Israel. Lee had the integrity not to join the 390 of her fellow representatives who voted in favor, and she inserted some critical comments about the resolution into the Congressional Record. But she lacked the clarity or courage to join Kucinich and four other brave souls (including LA’s Maxine Waters and Republican Ron Paul) in daring to vote “no”; instead, Lee (like Woolsey) was among 22 Representatives who simply voted “present.” (The Senate, including Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, had already voted unanimously in favor of a similar resolution.)

As these votes suggest, Congress remains Israeli-occupied territory—an overwhelming majority in both houses stands ready to line up behind Israel no matter what it does. In that context, what does it matter how Lee votes?

In strictly legislative terms, the obvious answer is “it doesn’t.” No one can argue that a sixth “no” vote on Pelosi’s resolution or a ninth co-sponsor for Kucinich’s would slow the Israeli onslaught for even a second.

But when you look beyond the walls of Congress, there’s plenty of evidence that more and more of the American public is ill at ease with our government’s policy of all-out support for Israel, and that’s where Lee’s positions matter. Even if most of the mainstream media are as fervent as ever in their backing for Israel, there have been important, and unprecedented, defections among liberal commentators: consider, among others, the daring critical observations on Gaza, Israel, and U.S. policy by comic Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, constitutional lawyer and popular blogger Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, and long-time State Department aide Aaron David Miller in Newsweek. (All three happen to be Jewish.)

Nor is this ferment confined to the media elite. A poll conducted in the first days of the Gaza offensive by the respected Rasmussen Reports found that Americans supported Israel’s resort to military force by only a relatively narrow margin of 44 to 41 percent, with 15 percent undecided. Among Democrats, the results were even more striking: only 31 percent endorsed the Israeli attack, while 55 percent said Israel should have relied on diplomacy instead. And those results were published on Dec. 31, before the worst Israeli atrocities became known.

In other words, Americans are, at last, starting to wise up to what’s going on the Middle East, despite the manipulations of most of our media. The problem, as the recent Congressional votes show, is that the changing public mood has so far had only the most minimal effect in Washington.

Dennis Kucinich, to his eternal credit, is trying to change that. If Barbara Lee were to join him in his forthright denunciations of Israeli barbarism, it would make a difference: considering the prestige her steadfast opposition to American militarism has brought her, and the leadership roles she has played in the Congressional black and progressive caucuses, her endorsement would add legitimacy to Kucinich’s positions and set an example for other politicians to follow. That, in turn, could reinforce the changes in public opinion, setting off a virtuous cycle that might someday force a real change in U.S. and thence Israeli policy.

Instead, sad to say, the example Lee has set since the Gaza attack began is one of timid waffling—a posture that accomplishes nothing. As Dante may never have said, but John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. did, “the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

We know Barbara Lee is better than that. Call her office at (510) 763-0370 or (202) 225-2661 and tell them you’re waiting for her to take a leading role in opposing U.S. and Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Henry Norr, a Jew by birth, has spent six month in occupied Palestine.

The City of Berkeley has long taken a leadership role and committed substantial resources to creating strong community disaster response capabilities. Over 40 neighborhood Cache groups [groups that collect and store supplies for emergencies] have been certified and supplied and members trained by the City. Other such groups are organizing or wish to do so, and would benefit from assistance.

At the present time there is no organization of all the Cache neighborhoods, nor any coordinated way to offer assistance to developing groups. The city is doing its part, and it’s now time for the Berkeley community to step up and do its part! It is time to create an organization that addresses issues of planning, coordination and communication among existing Cache groups and provides assistance to neighborhoods in the process of disaster preparation. There is a proposal to develop a Berkeley Cache Network (BCN) as a response to these needs.

Towards the above ends, a meeting is being held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists at Cedar and Bonita streets. The primary purpose of the meeting is to determine if there is sufficient interest from Berkeley Cache groups to form a BCN, and if so, how to proceed in doing so. The another purpose is to determine interest and establish needs of those groups who wish to become better prepared to respond to a disaster and develop plans to address those needs. After a general presentation and a Q&A, the group will divide into discussion groups: one for Caches, one for partially organized, and one for the unorganized. A report back from each group to all will close the evening. Refreshments will be served.

As it stands now, localized disasters can be dealt with by the city, appropriate neighborhood groups, and, if needed, mutual aid from other governmental and private groups. In an area-wide disaster, such as the large earthquake we are told to expect within the next 30 years, particularly on the Hayward Fault, such response would not be adequate.

In a potentially catastrophic event, although Cache and organized groups could respond to their immediate neighborhoods, it is likely that response to the needs of the unorganized groups would fall upon those groups that are prepared. When the large number of people in Berkeley for school, shopping, or business is added in, needs would vastly multiply. Joint planning and cooperation by the multiple stakeholders could also help prepare for these greater eventualities.

We are all keenly aware of how the response to Katrina was both delayed and inadequate because of lack of coordination, shared information, of people who knew of each other and were prepared to cooperate and respond. The additional problem of lack of stockpiling immediately needed resources magnified the disastrous results.

The radio frequency identification checkout system (RFID) at Berkeley Public Library needs more money. Yes, even before the system has been paid, some of the equipment is so deteriorated that it needs replacement. But the principal reason is that the original vendor, Checkpoint Systems, has abandoned the RFID maintenance market and sold its client base to another company. The library wants to spend more money for a maintenance contract and equipment from the new vendor. The sticking point is that the new vendor, 3M, does not comply with the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act, and so a waiver is needed for the library to proceed.

Many people might wonder why the library would want to continue with RFID at this juncture. Originally purchased as labor-saving technology, it’s proved to be a net consumer of labor hours. That is, it requires more labor hours to operate than it saves. This was especially true during the installation phase, when the soft costs—primarily labor hours appropriated from the library’s operating budget to install the system—amounted to more than the original price tag. Now, nearly four years into the experiment, the library has come up with some savings. It’s advancing the notion that RFID might have displaced labor hours equivalent to the work of 1.44 employees—an insignificant amount in view of the system’s costs.

In June of 2007, the American Library Association’s annual convention devoted some of its program to a consideration of RFID. The consensus was that RFID systems produced no positive return on investment. So reported the current library director in oral comments to the board at its July meeting. And, in fact, relatively few public libraries use RFID—between 1 percent and 5 percent. This is because most institutions have realized that RFID is expensive to purchase, expensive to install, and expensive to maintain. Santa Clara County Library studied RFID extensively—prior to adoption!—and rejected it as unlikely to produce any net savings. By contrast, Berkeley Public Library was early to adopt and late to catch on.

Going further, Oakland Public Library tested RFID prior to taking the plunge. It was tested at one of Oakland’s branches, tested entirely at the vendor’s expense, and removed when it failed to perform. In September of 2005, in the East Bay Daily News, Jackie Griffin, then library director, pronounced the entire RFID enterprise at Berkeley as a “…test…a beta version….”, in a quaint attempt to defuse criticism. Well, it’s been a very expensive test and the results indicate failure.

And so BPL’s rationale for pressing forward with RFID boils down to two arguments: (1) that, if RFID is abandoned, the money spent on it to date will be “wasted,” and (2) that it will be too expensive to transition to an optical/barcode system.

1. The first argument is based on a fundamental misconception. It’s a common one, where failed projects are driven forward based on the magnitude of their already expended (sunk) costs. The past investment in most cases is unrecoverable (e.g., there’s no market for used library RFID equipment). Hence, sunk costs are not relevant for judging whether the project should be continued. What is relevant are the expected future savings. But what will they be? The most likely prospect is that the current RFID system will have to be replaced in the not-so-distant future. The predictable hand wringing over the “waste” of public assets neglects the principles of basic finance. Prudent managers do not re-invest in poor-earning assets; they get rid of them. The opposite thinking leads to the kind of Bridge-to-Nowhere arguments where, if half the bridge has been built, the other half needs to be completed to avoid “wasting” the sums already spent. Folk wisdom puts it more succinctly: no throwing good money after bad.

2. Anyone who’s been to the grocery store recently has observed the speed and efficiency of optical/barcode checkout. It’s a robust, mature technology which costs a fraction of RFID. Libraries such as San Jose Public have well-attested rates of 80 percent for patron self-checkout with optical/barcode systems, higher than the highest rate for self-checkout ever claimed by BPL. So, why can’t we have it in Berkeley? The library is claiming that it will be too expensive to transition to optical/barcode. (As opposed to the continuing expense of RFID?) But their estimate of the costs for a new system, hardware and software, is just too steep for credibility. More realistic numbers might come from optical/barcode vendors. Moreover, BPL does not factor in any savings from such a transition. No savings for improved optical/barcode self-checkout. No savings for the expenses forgone by eliminating RFID—replacement of RFID equipment, maintenance contracts, RFID tags, etc.—projected to escalate in future years. A professional librarian’s independent estimate of annual savings from abandoning RFID in the periodicals section of the library, alone, is $10,000! Projected over the total items in the library’s collection, the savings will clearly be far greater.

If the library persists in its pro-RFID bias, when will the library user (citizen and taxpayer) get a break? Are we stuck with the RFID system largely because it didn’t work out? Why not do it right this time and invest in something that has a proven track record? In 2004, the City Council found outside financing for the RFID system. It could do this now for optical/barcode, a genuine improvement for the Public Library.

If we allow for palliative, time-wasting measures to keep RFID in place now, what happens? Who wants to bet that the library won’t be coming back to the taxpayer, near term, for a brand-new RFID system? They’ll certainly have to before 2011 when most of the library board’s RFID zealots will be termed out. Any takers?

Jim Fisher is a member of SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense).

It’s barely three years since Al Gore put global warming on the map with his video, An Inconvenient Truth. Global warming was barely on the public radar before then. Recent events show that we have made significant progress on the issue. Despite the despair in much of the media, echoed in the pages and on the web screens of the Planet, it’s very clear that due to concerted effort both nationally and worldwide, we’ve turned the corner on global warming and are now moving the other way.

Bitter cold in the Bay Area in mid-December, snow in New Orleans where formerly there were hurricanes, paralyzing cold and snow in Portland, Seattle and across the Midwest to Vermont and New York, airplanes skidding off icy runways at many airports! We have turned from global warming to global cooling with a vengeance. The cold-induced drought in California in the past two years is also a clue; we are in a cold dry “La Niña” instead of a warm wet “El Niño.” Cold and snow in China earlier in the year also indicate a new cooling. After many storms in 2004 and 2005, the last three hurricane seasons have fizzled and the danger is past. Even sea level rise has stabilized. The people of the Earth should be proud.

It’s been tough, but in three years we’ve licked global warming. The Recession (Depression?) has helped. Skyrocketing oil prices have now collapsed. Values are now falling through the floor as the world abandons fossils fuels. Oil and gas stocks continue to rise, unburnt, as the glut deepens and spreads. CO2 levels are fading fast with the curtailment of oil and gas usage. OPEC is curtailing production. Nobody wants the stuff. It’s the end of an era.

Now that we’ve defeated global warming, we can turn our attention to other things. The effects of global cooling, attested to in TV images nationwide, must of course be dealt with, but if we can stop warming, we can deal with cooling on our own terms. But we also have to deal with many other more profound problems: a speculation economy that’s out of control, the real pollution of soot and chemicals and toxic waste, crackerbox suburban housing far from any job, the rush to nuclear and corporate solar (touted highly by warming afficionados), political corruption on a mass scale, the Military-Industrial Complex and the permanent war economy, the apathy and inanity of the general population, the empty-headedness of media “entertainment,” the surveillance society based on the Internet. With global warming gone as an issue, we still have much to do.

So let’s rekindle the collective spirit that killed global warming and turn it to our other challenges. We did it once, we can do it again. I am shivering in my cold apartment, but my heart is glad. Thank you, Al, and in this season of Christmas giving and New Year’s resolutions, let’s thank ourselves for a job well done and rededicate ourselves as we know we should. Here’s to the Future!

Steve Tabor is an environmental and political activist residing in Alameda.

The Berkeley Public Library’s (BPL) response to questions asked by the Peace and Justice Commission (P&J) included some very misleading answers. These were regarding the library’s request for a waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.

BPL made the request for a waiver because the library wants to sign a contract with 3M (a company involved in the nuclear industry) to maintain its Radio Frequency ID system (RFID), a so-called self-service checkout system.

Although the P&J’s questions mentioned RFID, the library’s answers never used the acronym RFID. Instead they referred to “self-checkout technology” (or the Checkpoint system) in such a manner that the reader is led to believe that there is only one type of self-checkout system (i.e., RFID). However, there is another form of self-checkout system: the barcode self-checkout system which BPL Central had prior to its adoption of RFID. Barcode self-checkout machines cost as little as $12,300 (San Diego Public Library) whereas the RFID self-checkout machines cost in the range of $20,000 according to 3M.

When the P&J asked in their written questions “what would it cost to reinstate the security function that existed prior to the installation of the checkpoint system?” the library responded that the question presumes a return to manual checkout [by staff]. Then it went on to elaborate the supposedly huge cost necessitated by conversion to staff manual checkout in a new security system. First, the question does not presume a return to manual checkout because a return to a barcode self-checkout system is an option. Second, in itemizing the cost for security strips, BPL includes $120,000 for the 600,000 items held by BPL, even though in the next paragraph it states “…some of the current library collection does retain the security devices of its earlier system….” The library continues, “…the entire collection would need to be handled to determine the need for re-tagging each individual item.” What re-tagging? Neither a manual checkout nor a barcode self-checkout system requires re-tagging. All items in the existing RFID system already have barcode labels, and the same barcode labels are used for manual and barcode self-checkout.

Furthermore, BPL speaks of the cost of removing all the RFID tags, and the possible damage to the books and other items. Removal of the tags is not necessary. There is a simple method for deactivating the tags without removal (not to be herein divulged for security reasons).

BPL told the P&J Commission that in-house personnel have been doing the maintenance on the RFID system. P&J asked why, then, do “you argue that an outside vendor is needed?” The library’s answer indicated that it is not maintenance for which they need an outside vendor, but the expectation of “increased equipment failure” and the need for its replacement. BPL states, “…without a contract and the means to replace critical components the library’s investment…would be fully lost as the system ages and degrades into a state of inoperability.”

It appears the library’s existing RFID system is on its last legs or as BPL puts it, at “its lifecycle end.” That being the case, why buy another RFID system, which, in another three years, may reach its “life- cycle end”? Whatever its initial cost, a barcode manual or a barcode self-checkout system is a more durable and patron friendly system.

The same amount of training and guidance used to encourage the public to use RFID self-checkout machines, if applied to the use of barcode self-checkout machines, would undoubtedly have the same results; perhaps better, because patrons wouldn’t need to be concerned about radio frequency radiation or privacy invasion.

On the other hand, why not a return to staff manual checkout? In these dire economic times, the library could contribute to economic recovery by creating entry-level jobs for checkout, thus returning personal contact to library transactions and a more friendly atmosphere.

The library’s request for a waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act is expected to be on the City Council’s Tuesday Jan. 27 agenda. Please check the city’s website, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Home.aspx or call the city clerk (981-6900) to verify the date. Please attend to ask the council to deny waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act which was overwhelmingly approved by Berkeley voters in 1986. Also helpful would be a letter to the mayor and City Council sent c/o the city clerk at clerk@cityofberkeley.info.

Gene Bernardi is a member of SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense).

Columns

Who’s On First Award? to U.S. intelligence for its analysis of al-Qaeda. According to CIA Director Michael Hayden, the organization is growing stronger and preparing to launch attacks in Africa, Europe and the Arabian Peninsula. He said there was a “bleed out” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with al Qaeda operatives spreading into North Africa, which they could use as a springboard for attacks on Europe.

A week later, Matthew Burrows, who heads up the long-range analysis section of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), said, “The appeal of terrorism is waning,” and al Qaeda is on the decline, having alienated supporters with indiscriminate killings. According to Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” a report by the ONI, “Al Qaeda has not achieved broad support in the Islamic world. Its harsh pan-Islamist ideology and policies appear only to a tiny minority of Muslims.”

Enabling Paranoia Award to the U.S. Congress for its resolute stand against terrorism. In 2003, Congress identified 160 sites in the country that might be potential targets for terrorist attacks. In 2004 that list had grown to 1,849. In 2005 the number was 28,360. In 2006 there were 77,769. By February 2008, the potential number of sites had grown to 300,000, including the Illinois Apple and Pork Festival. Being a “designated site” entitles local authorities to apply for Homeland Security money for equipment and police.

Lapdog Award to Canada’s Conservative government for first listing the U.S. as a country which uses torture--along with Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria—and then reversing themselves and apologizing when Washington protested.

Shortly thereafter, a secret Canadian government report found that Canadian Omar Khadr, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since he was 16 years old, had been tortured. The torture included extended periods of sleep deprivation. When the evidence was presented to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he dismissed it, saying, “Canada has sought assurances that Mr. Khadr … will be treated humanely.”

One of Khadr’s Canadian lawyers, Dennis Edney, said Harper’s comment “defies belief.” The detainee’s American military lawyer said that the report “shows the assurances the Canadian government has been offering all these years were false. It’s shameful that the Canadian government is continuing to allow this to go on.”

A Purple Heart Award to Jeff Black, director of Idaho Peace Officer Standards and Training Academy for coming up with a slogan for graduates: “Don’t suffer from PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], go out and cause it.” PTSD, along with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI), is the signature wound soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from. Estimates are that 40 percent of the veterans of both wars suffer from PTSD and MTBI.

The symptoms of both are very similar, and include anti-social behavior, aggression, sleeplessness, impotence, depression, and heightened incidences of suicide.

The U.S. military recently decided not to award Purple Hearts to PSTD and MTBI sufferers.

History Get Me Rewrite Award to former President George W. Bush for his comment comparing the demand for a withdrawal from Iraq to similar demands to end the Vietnam War:

“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of American withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields.”

During the war the U.S. dropped more bombs on Southeast Asia than the allies had dropped in World War II, killed some three million people, maimed millions more, and added such words to our vocabulary as “free fire zone” and “strategic hamlet.” The “killing fields” were a direct result of the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and the CIA engineered overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and his replacement with military dictator, Lon Nol. The Khmer Rouge in turn overthrew Lon Nol and murdered two million Cambodians. An intervention by the Vietnamese ended the genocide and drove the Khmer Rouge from power.

Lt. William Calley Award to DynCorp, a mercenary organization hired by the U.S. to provide security in Iraq. A Dyn Corp soldier, who was a former U.S. Army vet and prison guard, told the New Yorker, “The real problem in this war on terror is you guys, the press. Ties our hands. The only way to fight this is to give them back the same medicine, like Operation Phoenix, in Vietnam. My Lai—what Calley did there was probably just orders.”

Operation Phoenix—which My Lai was part of—executed between 50,000 and 70,000 “Viet Cong supporters” in Vietnam. The My Lai massacre of Mar. 16, 1968 was led by Lt. William Calley. There is no agreement on the number who died at My Lai, but it was over 500, mainly women and children.

The “Beam Me Up Scotty” Award to the Pentagon for trying to create a hologram for the children of parents deployed in war zones. The kids will “boot” up their parents on a home computer and, according to the Pentagon, “The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, every day topics.” The child “may get a response from saying ‘I love you,’ or “I miss you,’ or “Good night.’”

According to Navy Commander Russell Shilling, the psychologist overseeing the program, “The children don’t quite understand Mommy and Daddy being deployed” and “That kind of interaction…is very important.”

The parent would record comments before they were deployed and then artificial intelligence software that runs the hologram would respond to a child’s question or comment.

So if Jimmy or Jane says “Mommy come home,” does the program answer “Be all you can be?” or maybe bust the kid for undermining morale?

Ass-Backward Award to Lockheed Martin, the largest arms company in the world, for building the littoral combat ship “Freedom” before it completed all the designs. The ship—at $600 million plus—was first welded together and then designed, delaying construction and increasing costs. “It’s not good to be building while you’re designing,” said Vice. Adm. Paul E. Sullivan, who supervises ship building for the Navy.

Creative Accounting Award to the Pentagon, which is on track to spend $110 billion on missile defense by 2013 (the system has already cost $150 billion since it was launched in 1983) without any idea of what it will end up with. The accounting methodology is called “spiral development,” which, in the words of a Pentagon directive means, “end-state requirements are not known at program initiation.” In essence, “spiral development” means there are no set dates, no costs ceilings, no designated outcome and no way to determine if an outcome is achieved.

SNAFU Award to the U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, who headed the investigation of the Feb. 23 crash of the $1.5 billion B-2 Stealth bomber, “Spirit of Kansas,” on the island of Guam. According to the investigation, moisture in the plane’s sensors made the B-2’s computer cause the plane to climb too sharply, causing it to stall and crash.

Carpenter said, “The aircraft actually performed as it was designed. In other words all systems were functioning normally.”

Except, perhaps, the part about crashing.

Great Moments in Journalism Award to FOX News for its coverage of the massacre of 90 Afghan civilians—including 60 children and 15 women—at the village of Azizabad by U.S. fighter bombers. The U.S. military initially denied the story and said the dead were “insurgents.” A Pentagon spokesperson said an “independent journalist” embedded with the U.S. troops that called in the air strike “corroborated” their story.

The “independent journalist”: Oliver North, working for Fox News. North was at the center of the Iran-Contra Conspiracy to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and shredded files to keep them from government investigators.

Man’s Best Friend Award to the Blackwater security firm, which supplies mercenaries for the U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan. The company—several members of which were recently indicted for killing up to 17 civilians in Iraq—is being investigated for shipping assault weapons and silencers hidden in large sacks of dog food into Iraq.

Certain weapons, including silencers, are banned for use by security firms because they are considered incompatible with the job of guarding diplomats.

“The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone,” former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou told ABC.

The United Nations has accused the U.S. of running “death squads” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of assassinating people opposed to U.S. policies in both countries.

Unclear On The Concept Award to U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, ranking Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee, who attacked the Inspector General’s Office for its investigation of a Pentagon program to put retired military officers on TV and radio as “force multipliers” for the Bush Administration’s message on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and terrorism.

Hunter said the retired officers were a “great asset” for the country and completely independent. “The idea that somehow Don Rumsfeld got these people in a room and told them what to say, if you believe that you don’t believe in the independence of these generals. None of them are used to having people tell them what to do.”

The most common phrase heard in the military? “Yes, sir.”

Word Smithing Award to Navy Commander Pauline Storum who defended the conditions at Guantanamo Bay prison and challenged the charge that the camp uses solitary confinement. Storum said the camp has “single-occupancy cells.”

It is somewhat ironic, isn’t it, that it is the City of Oakland that is mostly being tested in these days following the shooting death of Oscar Grant, more so than the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, the BART Police Department, or the Alameda County Office of the District Attorney.

Oakland, after all, had nothing to do with Mr. Grant’s death, nor any responsibility for the administration of justice in the case, and is only in the center of the storm because of an accident of geography. Mr. Grant was shot to death by a BART police officer on New Years Day on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station, and the headquarters of both BART and the District Attorney’s office are both located in the city. Because of this, demonstrations protesting Mr. Grant’s death, as well as the accompanying vandalism, violence, and arrests, have all been centered in Oakland.

But there is nothing wrong with this type of periodic shakeup and testing in the life of a city. In fact, it’s a good thing. It’s one of the ways that we can measure ourselves, see who we actually are—under pressure—instead of what we imagine ourselves or would like ourselves to be, one of the ways we can see what our leaders, organizations, and citizens actually stand for. It can be a revealing time, if one pays close attention.

There have been some extraordinary moments to pay attention to.

On the Wednesday night of the second downtown Grant march and rally, in that tense time along Broadway between the end of the rally at Oakland City Hall and the first incidents of vandalism at 12th Street, I came across Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks standing in the middle of the street and grumbling—as only Ms. Brooks can grumble—that she was tired, she was cold, and that she wanted everybody to go home now that the march and rally were over so that she could, herself. Small crowds had gathered on all four corners of 14th and Broadway, and security from the protest march and rally were trying to keep them from a confrontation with Oakland Police. Ms. Brooks could have gone home. Downtown is not her district, and she has no direct responsibility there. But, fussing, she decided to stay.

About a half hour or so later, after a small group had run across the street from the east side of Broadway at 12th and broken out the windows at the AC Transit bus stop kiosk and the Wells Fargo building on the corner, I saw a muscular young (late 20s to mid-30s) African-American man walking up and down the street, working himself up towards his own personal confrontation with the police. He had attacked the door to the Wells Fargo building several times—unaccountably—with a book, and seemed angered and puzzled and frustrated that he could do no damage with it. He then walked north on Broadway towards CityCenter with a march protest sign stapled to a wooden stake in his hands, muttering to himself, louder and louder as he walked, about the police, and how it wasn’t right, and how he wasn’t going to take it any more. Desley Brooks saw him and stopped him somewhere around 13th Street, standing with him by herself for the longest, talking with him, absorbing his anger, and trying to calm him down, the councilmember some 12 inches shorter than the man himself.

For a while, it looked like she was succeeding, but then the Oakland riot police—booted and helmeted—appeared on the opposite side of Broadway in response to the vandalism at 12th and began walking up the street to clear it. The man talking to Ms. Brooks may have seen them and shouted something at them, or the riot police may have noticed his agitation with the councilmember, and decided to intervene. Whatever the case, a contingent of about ten of them broke off from the main group and walked across the street towards Ms. Brooks and the man. Shouting now, the man turned and walked into the street to meet them. Ms. Brooks grabbed one of his arms to try to stop him and he lurched his arm away, so powerfully that he jerked her with him, spinning her and almost literally lifting her off the ground. The riot police rushed forward, batons raised, but Ms. Brooks—along with some members of the march and rally security—somehow got around between them, and for a moment it was all confusion. I don’t know what was said or done in the middle of that crowd, but it must have been awesome, because in a minute or so, Ms. Brooks emerged, dragging the man back up by his arm onto the sidewalk away from the riot police, and the riot police themselves stood for a moment and did not follow, some of them talking with the march and rally security team, finally turning and walking back across Broadway.

I saw Ms. Brooks standing and talking with the man for another fifteen minutes or so, off the street and down among the storefront shops at CityCenter.

Given the certainty that the riot police were ready to arrest the man and take him to the ground, if necessary, and given the man’s obvious determination to make that necessary and to resist arrest, this was an explosive confrontation averted, certainly the most potentially dangerous one I witnessed that night. A violent arrest in the middle of Broadway--and it is hard to see how this would not have turned out violent--in full view of television cameras and crowds of people, would have probably escalated the confrontations and violence and vandalism in Oakland far beyond that which we have already seen. There are a lot of people who would like to see that violence. Ms. Brooks—one of the fiercest critics of the Oakland Police Department on City Council and one of the two public officials to label the killing of Oscar Grant and execution—did not. But she was only one of many officials and citizens who worked in the days following Mr. Grant’s death to walk the line between protesting that death, demanding reform, and keeping Oakland safe and intact for all of its residents.

In a larger sense, props (much props? mad props? forgive the old man if he can’t always keep up with the newspeech) must be given to both the leaders and members of the Wednesday night Oscar Grant march and rally security and the Oakland Police Department for working together—with emphasis on the word together—to defuse the potentially volatile situation on Broadway that came after the end of the rally.

(I know I’m getting criticism in some circles for praising the police in these instances. One young man emailed to say I should get a job as a public relations person for the police department “if you haven’t already instead of you doing all of this ‘free’ work for them. I’ll take the knocks, since I think I’ve done more than my share of criticizing the police in the past and will do so again in the future, as the situation warrants. I just believe that if you spend so much time asking—or demanding—that the police do the right thing, you ought to acknowledge it when they do.)

Anyway, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker, and representatives of the Committee Against Police Executions (CAPE, the organization that sponsored the back-to-back Wednesday Grant marches and rallies) said repeatedly between the Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 events that they were working to shore up security following the Jan. 7 vandalism. Oakland police recognized that they were the flashpoint for crowds angered by the BART police shooting death of Oscar Grant, and so avoided confrontation on the night of the 14th as much as possible, in some instances withdrawing completely out of sight from the area after march security had secured the intersection at 14th and Broadway. For their part, the orange-vest-clad march security—many of them slender, college-aged kids—put themselves at risk forming lines on the street corners and in the middle of the street, performing their tasks with intelligence and discipline and respect for the crowds out on the street. That some violence eventually ensued was not their fault. But the security actions on Broadway on the 14th showed that someone-- at City Hall, at OPD headquarters on 7th, and among the march organizers--is putting in some careful thought and hard work to continue the rights of citizens to protest the shooting death of Oscar Grant, while at the same time keeping the rest of Oakland’s citizens and its downtown area safe. Whoever they are, they deserve props. Wednesday night could have been very different--very much worse.

I wish I had the time to list all of the extraordinary acts I’ve observed in the last few days surrounding the Grant killing. One of them came during the first BART Board meeting following Mr. Grant’s death, when a group of high school students marched to the BART headquarters and were turned away at the door. A group of them, either led or inspired by a couple of aging members of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) who came out armed with a bullhorn, began chanting something to the effect that “the whole damn system is guilty.” Jumoke Hinton Hodge—newly elected to the Oakland School Board and no stranger to struggle and advocacy herself—came up and began talking to some of the students, telling them that they needed to be more specific than just “the system,” urging them to continue their advocacy and struggle but giving some suggestions on who and what they might target. There followed one of those marvelous teaching moments that you sometimes see in the midst of struggle in which Hinton Hodge and the students talked strategy and tactics--sometimes heatedly, always passionately and seriously--outside the Kaiser Building. This apparently ticked off the RCP guys, who found themselves at the back of the line they fancied themselves leading, and so they began shouting—over the bullhorn—that Ms. Hinton Hodge was misleading the students, and what was needed—right then—was a real dialogue. A real dialogue was actually taking place. The RCP guys were trying to drown it out.

RCP has been one of the groups trying to mythologize the downtown vandalism, turning it into the beginning act in rebellion/Revolution while criticizing city officials and leaders of CAPE for trying to keep the marches and rallies peaceful. RCP is not by themselves in this. But I’ve run out of space, once more, so that has to be the subject of another column, at another time.

Last week’s column, about Berkeley’s flock of parrots (or, depending on the source, parakeets or conures) drew a gratifying response. There are lots of keen observers out there, and I appreciate all your messages. Although some mysteries remain, it’s now possible to make a positive identification of the birds, map their cruising range, and draw a composite picture of their daily routine.

Based on the photographs of Newton X. Liu, Joel Karnofsky, and Steve Haflich, and several detailed verbal descriptions, the Berkeley parrots are clearly mitred parakeets (or, to aviculturists, mitred conures.) That’s a different species than the avian celebrities of Telegraph Hill, which are mostly red-masked parakeets (AKA cherry-headed conures) —although one San Francisco mitred parakeet paired with a red-masked, producing multiple broods of hybrids. The two forms are similar, but mitred parakeets have significantly less red on their heads.

Most correspondents reported a maximum of four parrots seen together—a much smaller flock than my memories from the ‘80s.

But Pam Zumwalt saw six in her south Berkeley neighborhood last July. Maybe the additional two were fledglings that subsequently died or struck out on their own.

The current flock seems to be composed entirely of adult birds, which have red foreheads and cheeks; young mitred parakeets have green cheeks. Could some be survivors of the original escapees who founded the local flock? I couldn’t find longevity data for mitreds, but red-masked parakeets have lived 26 years in captivity, and a bird of related species, the blue-headed parakeet, made it to 31.

With the exception of Zumwalt’s sighting near Ashby and Acton, most reports came from northwest Berkeley, clustering around James Kenney Park. I was tempted to start sticking colored pins in a map, like Tony Hillerman’s Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, but I don’t have the wall space. Haflich writes that he has been seeing the birds around the park for 19 years. I scouted the area yesterday; no parrots, although I was surprised to find an apparent pair of white-tailed kites that may be planning to nest, which is pretty cool in itself.

“We are a mapping company located on the 2nd floor of a building on the corner of 7th and University,” writes Susan Waldorf. “Last Thursday, when all our patio doors and windows were open, I heard a very unusual bird sound. Just above us on the telephone wires were a pair of lovely parrots just like the flock on Telegraph Hill in SF (the movie about them is one of my all-time favorites). We watched them until they were chased away by a large crow or raven. Now I look everywhere in the trees of the neighborhood in hopes of a second sighting. We are only two blocks from James Kenney Park. Your article gives me hope that a flock will survive among us.”

Newton Liu has also seen the parrots “bullied by crows in the air” near Juanita and Rose. You have to wonder if Berkeley’s burgeoning crow population has contributed to the parrots’ decline—although as cavity nesters, they should be relatively secure from avian raiders like crows and ravens.

Sally Meeks reports parrot encounters near her workplace at 5th and Jones, and near Cedar and San Pablo. “They seem to like tall, scrappy pines in the neighborhood,” she writes. “I’ve seen them disappear into them at least twice now.”

As to what they’re eating, Ruth Tobey says the birds are regulars at a feeder on Tevlin Street, near Gilman: “They arrive between 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning and stay for at least 15 minutes each time. Sometimes they return in the afternoon … They are pretty ‘talkative’ and chatter while they take turns at the feeder.” Tobey says they favor the black oil sunflower seeds. And Liu and Paul Preston have documented their raids on persimmon trees.

No one seems to know where they nest, although Haflich speculates: “There may be nesting activity in the tall palms on the west side of 4th street between Cedar and Jones, or else in the trees along Cedar in that same block.” Pam Zumwalt writes: “I have seen (and heard), on and off over the last several years, two to four around Gilman and 6th, generally while we were leaving Picante, around sundown.” That suggests an evening roost somewhere nearby.

I was also unaware that the mitred parakeets are not the only free-range psittacines in town. Here’s Marilyn Pon: “I’ve been feeding a yellow-headed green amazon parrot who lives free in my neighborhood (near the Ashby BART station) for 15 years or so ... She comes by nearly every day and flies into my bedroom to a perch on my dresser.” Pon wonders about the amazon’s history, and so do I.

That’s the story so far. I’ll share any additional reports in a later column. And thanks again to all the parrot-spotters!

Kingman Hall today. The arched loggia has been enclosed in glass, and front-yard parking is now the norm.

The first Theta Xi house at 1739 Euclid Ave., left, was designed by Thomas D. Newsom. (San Francisco Call).

By Daniella Thompson

The fireplace in the creekside amphitheater, center, is original, but the stone seats are a recent improvement.

By Daniella Thompson

The butterfly gate on Le Conte Ave., right, is the latest installation in the amphitheater improvement project.

By E.J. McCullagh

Theta Xi house at 1730 La Loma Ave. in a Berkeley promotional brochure.

Few houses in Berkeley (or anywhere, for that matter) can boast the picturesque setting and colorful history of Kingman Hall, the student co-op at 1730 La Loma Avenue. Perched above the oak-wooded canyon of Strawberry Creek, the building overlooks a sunken garden with a creekside amphitheater. Built in 1914 for Nu Chapter of the Theta Xi fraternity, the house has mirrored the history of Berkeley over the past 95 years.

Theta Xi, an engineering fraternity, established its Berkeley chapter in March 1910. The first ten members took up residence in the old Kappa Sigma house at 1739 Euclid Avenue—an ornate High-Peaked Colonial Revival affair designed in 1900 by Thomas D. Newsom. The original owner was Demetrius Satoff, a Bulgarian-born shoemaker and realtor doing business at 2121 Center Street.

Four years after its founding, Nu Chapter arranged for more desirable lodging. On May 3, 1914, the Oakland Tribune announced: “Theta Xi will move on August 1 to occupy their new $27,000 structure at Le Conte and La Loma. This house is the gift of wealthy alumni and is complete in every detail. It contains accommodations for thirty besides the sleeping porches and two guest rooms. A billiard room in the basement is also being planned for. The first floor outside will be constructed of brick and the remaining two stories will have a rough plaster finish.”

The completed building, a 25-bedroom dormered country villa with a triple-arch entrance loggia, ended up entirely stucco-clad with the exception of its brick base. The architects listed in the building permit were Drysdale & Thomson, Sharon Building, San Francisco. The contractor was the Barry Building Co. of Oakland.

While nothing is currently known about Thomson, Charles W. Drysdale (1872-1918) was the right-hand man of eminent San Francisco architect George W. Kelham (1871-1936), who had his offices in the Sharon Building, which he had designed. Constructed in 1912, the building teemed with architectural offices, but it’s not likely that Drysdale & Thomson had an independent practice, since Drysdale worked for Kelham until the end of his short life. Thomson, possibly a structural engineer, may have been another Kelham employee.

Kelham received his architectural training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1898 joined Trowbridge & Livingston of New York as a designer. In 1906, he was dispatched by this firm to San Francisco as project supervisor for the rebuilding of the Palace Hotel, which had been devastated in the earthquake. Here Kelham opened his own office, and in October of the same year brought Drysdale out from Chicago to run his office.

Charles W. Drysdale was born in Illinois and worked for a while in Washington, D.C. For a dozen years before his premature death he oversaw all of Kelham’s major architectural projects, including the rebuilding of the Palace Hotel, supervising the building of the Panama Pacific Exposition (1915), and designing the Carnegie (Main) Library at the San Francisco Civic Center (1917).

Drysdale died suddenly of heart failure on Sept. 4, 1918. His obituary, published the same month in The Architect & Engineer, informed, “A short time before his death Mr. Drysdale was conversing with his chief and apparently was enjoying the best of health. He expired at his desk before medical assistance could be procured.” The same article reported that “Mr. Kelham was especially pleased with Mr. Drysdale’s work in connection with the building of the Carnegie Library in the San Francisco Civic Center. The minutest detail was not overlooked here. Mr. Drysdale personally designed and superintended the construction of the new Elks’ home in San Rafael, himself being an active member of that order. Mr. Kelham pays a high tribute to the worth and character of the deceased. ‘He was the fine type of man and in every way a credit to the profession,’ said Mr. Kelham.”

Kelham would go on to succeed John Galen Howard as the University of California’s supervising architect, a position he retained from 1927 until his death in 1936. His Berkeley designs include Bowles Hall (1928-29); the Life Sciences Building (1930); International House (1930); Moses Hall (1931); McLaughlin Hall (School of Engineering, 1931); and Harmon Gymnasium (1933, now altered beyond recognition).

Drysdale’s design for the Theta Xi chapter house was apparently a success, for in October 1914, a mere ten weeks after it had opened, the building was selected by the students’ executive committee to serve as housing for the varsity football squad during its last weeks of training.

Theta Xi’s Nu Chapter resided at 1730 La Loma Avenue until 1964, but trouble began several years earlier. On October 4, 1959, a physics student by the name of Donald S. Wood limped into Cowell Hospital. Two days earlier he had been initiated into Theta Xi, and now he was suffering from acute nephritis. While young Wood was reluctant to talk about what had taken place, his father, a Los Angeles aircraft company executive, charged that Donald had been beaten with a paddle and forced to eat a large chunk of raw liver.

The Wood incident took place shortly after a University of Southern California student had choked to death on a piece of raw liver during his fraternity initiation, and California Attorney General Stanley Mosk issued a stern warning against such practices. UC officials and the Berkeley police launched an investigation to determine whether hazing had taken place.

Such was the uproar that State Senator Fred S. Farr announced his plan to introduce a bill prohibiting freshmen from joining fraternities and sororities, saying that it would give students time to exercise mature judgment and help eliminate irresponsible hazing practices. The system, claimed Senator Farr, was particularly bad at Berkeley, where many students dropped out when they failed to be pledged. “This is a major loss, not only to the individuals but to our society, which can’t afford to let good brains be wasted,” said Farr.

Three weeks after his initiation, Donald Wood was still in the hospital. The investigation revealed that he was put through a series of exercises that contributed to his physical exhaustion, in violation of university policy. He had not been given raw liver but fed mush with a color additive, and he was accidentally struck in the stomach with a paddle. Dr. Glenn Seaborg, then the Berkeley campus chancellor, announced that the university was withdrawing recognition of Nu Chapter for one year. In addition, seven of the chapter’s officers were placed on probation for the duration of the academic year. The Woods elected not to press charges.

Youthful anti-establishment sentiment in the 1960s robbed fraternities of their cachet, shrinking their memberships. Simultaneously, the university exerted pressure on the Northside Greek-letter societies to move south of campus. Theta Xi’s Nu Chapter disbanded in 1964 and was not reestablished until 1977.

With the fraternity gone, 1730 La Loma Ave. became a rooming house for male students popularly known as Toad Hall. In 1969, the building was purchased by Harold Mefford, a Castro Valley and Hayward attorney who had just co-founded the East Bay’s largest builder of low-income housing, the Eden Housing Corporation.

Mefford’s professed intention was to provide affordable housing to students, but he rented to all comers. Craig Healy, a Toad Hall resident during the Mefford period, says that the house functioned more like a commune than a rooming house. One of the residents was Joy, Country Joe McDonald’s personal secretary, who lived in a basement room. Author/Merry Prankster Ken Kesey and rock star David Crosby used to buy their drugs from one of Toad Hall’s residents, and their cars were often seen parked in front of the house. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Toad Hall was an epicenter of the Berkeley counterculture-the coolest place to live.

The neighbors weren’t thrilled. A letter from the late Elena Herr to the Zoning Officer complained about the strange and transitory nature of the tenants, as well as the shoddy appearance: “Blankets and pieces of cloth hang from the windows in the way of curtains and the front lawn is being used as a parking lot. […] Cars and motorcycles are also being repaired there.”

The Mefford era was short-lived. In 1973, he sold the building for $127,000 to the Living Love Center, a non-profit organization led by Ken Keyes Jr., author of Living Love-a Way to Higher Consciousness. The center conducted Weekend Consciousness Growth Intensives and disseminated “The Living Love Way” via broadcasts on KQED-FM every Saturday evening from 7:30 to 8 p.m.

The neighbors found no reason to be satisfied with the new arrangement. A request for service in May 1973 noted “A very large bus, possibly a converted Greyhound, used as a permanent living quarters by its owner, is parked conspicuously in the front yard of 1730 La Loma.” The follow-up report revealed that Keyes himself was “temporarily living on the bus because he is a paraplegic.”

The battle to dislodge the Living Love Center continued for four years, with numerous complaints from neighbors, city inspections, and inter-departmental memos. But all attempts were to no avail. Then the center itself decided to pull up stakes. On Nov. 22, 1976, it approached the city of Berkeley with an offer to donate the property for park use if it could be determined that it was located on the Hayward fault line. The city declined the offer. Fearing a proposed apartment development, Elena Herr approached the University Students’ Cooperative Association, suggesting they buy it. The building was, in fact, sold to the co-op for $300,000 in 1977.

USCA dedicated 1730 La Loma Avenue in October 1977 as Harry Kingman Hall, in honor of the general secretary of Stiles Hall (University YMCA), who in February 1933 inspired 14 UC students to establish the first student housing cooperative in Berkeley.

The 50 residents of Kingman Hall carry on the traditions of their various predecessors in the annual Living Love party, an initiation rite that takes place each fall. Residents and initiates dress in toga-draped sheet; one by one, the newbies descend, book in hand, into the dimly lit entrance hall, where an electronic keyboard provides eerie background music. Whether this tradition incorporates occult artifacts from the Theta Xi fraternity is not publicly known.

Kingman Hall was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in January 1999. The Theta Xi chapter house is now located in the Cornelius Beach Bradley House (Edgar A. Mathews, 1897) at 2639 Durant Ave., designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in Nov. 1997.

Lunar New Year Celebration and other Asian Traditions with lion and dragon dancing, music, martial arts and arts and crafts activities for the whole family from noon to 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org

Vox Dilecti “In the English Cathedral” at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $15-$20. Free to middle and high school students with I.D. www.sfcitychorus.org

Luke Bergmann author of “Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. berkeleyarts.org

Pablo “Mexcla” Menedez at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

THURSDAY, JAN. 29

FILM

Dziga Vertov “The Man with a Movie Camera” with a lecture by Jean-Pierre Gorin at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

READINGS AND LECTURES

Philip Kan Gotanda “Yohen” A bilingual Japanese-English reading of excerpts from his play, followed by discussion at 4 p.m. in the Durham Studio Theater, UC campus. Free, but reservations recommended. tdps.berkeley.edu

MUSIC AND DANCE

Kaki King at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com

Hunx and his Punx, Thorns of Life, Revolts at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $8. 525-9926.

SUNDAY, FEB. 1

CHILDREN

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Pippi Longstocking” at 2 and 4:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Feb. 9. Tickets are $14-$18. 296-4433. activeartstheatre.org

Joana Carneiro will succeed Kent Nagano as Berkeley Symphony director. The selection follows a two-year search that saw six guest conductors under consideration for the post leading the orchestra in concerts and in readings of compositions by the resident composers of the Symphony’s “Under Construction” series.

Carneiro, 32, has held numerous posts, including assistant conductor with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic (under Esa-Pekka Salonen) and the Santa Rosa Symphony (both 2005-08). This will be her first music directorship of a symphony orchestra.

Nagano, who has led the Symphony for 31 years, will assume the title of Conductor Laureate, and will continue to direct the Berkeley Academie, which will perform next on May 17.

“I had a sense of being at home even before I conducted,” Carneiro said from her home in her native Lisbon. “At the ‘Under Construction’ reading, I realized I knew four or five of the [symphony’s] musicians. [Concertmaster] Franklyn [D’Antonio] I’ve known for a long time. It was relaxed and familiar; I feel it started right there—a pure chemistry between the orchestra and myself. They were so committed, so well-prepared, with a profound spirit of collaboration, and that doesn’t often happen. And in speaking to the [Search] Committee, the musicians—everybody was excited, open-minded.

“Berkeley has the tradition of being an intellectual, curious community,” Carneiro continued, “because of the university, but also from the number of artists, of wonderful thinkers who live there. I’m looking forward with a sense of discovery to exploring with the orchestra and the community.”

Asked about her ideas for programming, Carneiro—who will debut as director in concert on Oct. 15—said she hoped to follow the “recipe of success Kent and the orchestra have progressed with for so many years, very much aware of relevant voices for our times. I hope I can continue to give voice to those who say something special, composers and performing artists, hearing those great new voices of the late 20th and 21st centuries paired with a lot of Romantic and earlier 20th-century music.”

Composers she mentioned included Berkeley-born Gabriela Lena Frank and John Adams, whose “Shaker Loops” she conducted here, and whose work she has conducted for other orchestras.

Jim Kleinman, the symphony’s executive director and founder of the “Under Construction” program, said, “She and I have talked quite a bit during her work here, and since, and she’s enthusiastic about the longtime, deeper investment we’re making in Bay Area composers.”

Carneiro said of the program, “I haven’t seen many programs like that; none exactly like it—how sustained, systematic, with the kind of feedback between the orchestra, conductor, composer and audience. The music director in the U.S. is a bridge between the orchestra and the community. I want to find ways of interacting with the community, not only through programmed concerts.”

Kleinman looked back on the search process, which began with Nagano’s announcement to the musicians, then the public, that he’d be stepping down: “That was Jan. 19, 2007, so it’s been two years, almost to the date. I’d been on board less than two months, so supporting Kent’s announcement and working on the search process was one of my first main tasks. Within a week, the orchestra had elected three musicians to the search committee of 10, which then met face to face. It was an amazing process; from the outside, it looked quick, but ironically for those of us living through it, it seemed a long time.”

Committee member Deborah Shidler, principal oboeist of the orchestra, commented on the Search Committee’s task: “We didn’t have a lot of time, but guided by Jim and Board President and Committee Chair Kathleen Henschel, we were able to go quickly, get into the nitty gritty ... There was the chance we’d make the decision, and whoever was selected wouldn’t be available, but Joana’s going to be there for all four concerts from October.”

Shidler continued, “The committee paid a lot of attention to the musicians and to the online surveys. After every concert, the musicians would walk out the stage entrance and there were always audience members who wanted to talk to us. We were looking for the right fit, not only as a musician, but as a person. She seemed to get what Berkeley’s about. And we loved the way she spoke to the orchestra—very positive, but demanding still. She pulls it out of the musicians ... We’re thrilled she accepted, and got the feeling she’s excited. That means we got the right choice—and we’re lucky we got her. Clearly, she’s a rising star.”

Shidler stressed that “we had six wonderful candidates, all nice people, who gave us good programs.” Kleinman reinforced that: “Six amazing guest conductors at different stages of their personal careers. Great musicians. I hope we have a continuing relationship with them all.”

Concertmaster Franklyn D’Antonio spoke of Carneiro’s “persona coming from the podium, her clarity expressing to the orchestra the depth and power she was pursuing in her relentless search for a sound. She wouldn’t let up until we got it. You only get that from the best conductors ... I treasure the times I’ve spent with Kent; he’s an incredibly inspiring conductor. At a break in one of Joana’s four rehearsals with us, I said to her, ‘Don’t give up on us! Kent didn’t, and got what he was seeking.’ She’s going to be an inspiration. We’re all delighted. I didn’t hear any dissenting opinions.”

Clark Suprynowicz, Berkeley resident and one of the six composers in residence for the “Under Construction” program over the past two years, remarked, “In the little bit of time we had preparing the music, I found her to be refreshingly candid, unafraid to ask questions ... She’ll be a radiant figurehead for the symphony—and arts organizations are synonomous with their figureheads. She’ll be the Berkeley Symphony.”

Patricio Da Silva, also a composer in residence for Under Construction, and fellow countryman of Carneiro, met her when they were “just teenagers, playing The Messiah together in an orchestra,” commented, “It’s a tremendous pick. There was a natural empathy between the players and the conductor. It really is a test of the conductor’s skills; at the reading, you have to do it right the first time, to be quick on the spot, know how to use the precious moment in the best way possible. I’m looking forward to more.”

Joana Carneiro will appear at the Symphony Gala at the Claremont Resort, May 15, which will honor founding orchestra member, flutist and board member Janet Maestri’s 40th anniversary and Kent Nagano’s 30th anniversary.

“The reason I do what I do,” said Carneiro, “is because music makes people happier. That’s a simple thought, but it’s a fundamental pillar for education, for growth as human beings. I hope I can live that thought in Berkeley.”

Oakland East Bay Symphony will present the world premiere of Bay Area composer Nolan Gasser’s World Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, also performing Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, at 8 p.m. Friday at the Paramount Theater in Oakland.

Music director Michael Morgan and Bryan Nies will both conduct. Featured soloists for World Concerto are Maya Beiser, cello; Jiebing Chen, erhu; Aruna Narayan Kalle, sarangi; and Bassam Saba, oud.

Nolan Gasser commented on his composition, a commission from Symphony patron Jim Bell of Bell Investments: “In the beginning, the cello, like a Westerner coming into her own identity, departs on a journey of discovery and self-discovery—like a “Hero’s Journey”—and almost on an airplane, first to China. The other solo instruments are also classical and act as ambassadors, introducing the Westerner to their culture. The instruments solo with the orchestra, join in conversation—joyful, but with moments of tension—then concluding with cooperation, collaboration—and cadenzas for the ambassador instruments like closing salvos.”

Gasser continued describing this musical journey: “Then off to India, where the narrative continues with the sarangi. Then the oud for the Muslim world. I envision it as sort of a conference call, or like a procession, where it all comes back—and the cello ends the second movement, asking how to proceed now? In the third movement—the movements are like Hegel’s thesis, antithesis and synthesis—the preliminary ideas have been worked out; now is the collaboration, working together, with improvised solos in their own style, a chance to jam awhile. Then all gather together, collaborating collectively, both idiomatic yet in four-part counterpoint—not an easy thing! Then the cello concludes in a fiery ending.”

Michael Morgan remarked that “Nolan’s piece was so strong, I reordered the concert. We announced, at first, the opposite—and more traditional—order, ending with a symphony. But World Concerto is strong enough to close the concert. So it’ll be Brahms, Copland—and then Gasser.”

Gasser, who Morgan said he first knew as a pianist “playing jazz at the Bohemian Club—then it turned out he was a composer”—is also a musicologist of medieval and Renaissance music (”where the Major 7ths came from in the birth of Jazz”). Morgan recalled that Jim Bell heard Gasser’s Black Suit Blues about Martin Luther King, which Morgan conducted. Then, on a visit to Santa Rosa Symphony, where all three heard Maya Beiser play, Bell proposed a commissioned piece. “Jim said, ‘How about a cello concerto?’” Gasser remembered, “and it became something appropriate to what Jim’s doing in the real world, this American businessman going around to different countries creating funding with like-minded entrepreneurs, with positive results. Like the way arts were patronized during the Renaissance, it’s back to reflecting the reality of daily life.”

“Jim and Bonnie Bell have changed the way we do business,” Morgan concurred. “They go out and show other businesses the win-win aspect of supporting the arts so each reinforces the other, not just one giving money to the other.”

Commenting on the new order of pieces in the program, Morgan said, “It’s become chronologically the old world to the new—Brahms to Gasser. It’s time to do Brahms; we always like something from the standard repertory with a new piece. And we hadn’t done Appalachian Spring—which Brian will conduct—since our first season.”

New World Concerto right on the heels of an inauguration with speeches—and grand hopes—of change ... “At the time we programmed it, we couldn’t have known,” said Morgan. “It’s turned out extremely well. On Friday night in Oakland [the program will also be performed Saturday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music], we will play the National Anthem, which isn’t routine.”

Raymond Burr, as usual, stars as the heavy in Anthony Mann's "Desperate."

The struggle of World War II and the triumph of its conclusion brought to the silver screen a vision of a nation bold and patriotic, wholesome and optimistic. From propaganda films to brassy celebratory musicals, Hollywood’s program of A-list releases rolled out a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked presentation of Norman Rockwell’s America.

But there was another side to the story.

Not everyone could forget the horrors of war, could ignore the blood and mud stains of battle, could wipe away the imagery of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. Many found it impossible to simply lay down their weapons and retire to the suburbs; for them the terror of the war lingered, and in Hollywood that creeping malaise manifested itself in the form of an anxious, fearful and pessimistic cinema—the stuff of B movies.

More than a decade later the French would give a name to it: film noir. But in America, during the genre’s heyday of the 1940s and ’50s, it had no name. Crime dramas, they were simply called, but it went deeper than that. The urban angst that was allowed no expression in the can-do spirit of mainstream film gave rise to a genre that went beyond mere crime in the depiction of a pervasive moral corruption and a spiraling spiritual decay. Living in the shadow of the Holocaust and under the cloud of imminent nuclear annihilation, there were, as William Faulker once said, no longer problems of the spirit but only the question: When will I be blown up?

Noir City, the San Francisco film festival that celebrates this era of cinematic darkness, perversity and mayhem, presents its annual 10-day orgy of angst beginning this Friday at the Castro Theater. The festival screens a double bill every day through Feb. 1.

The stark, gloomy, high-contrast imagery of noir came from Germany, carried across the Atlantic by filmmakers who left Germany just ahead of Hitler’s stormtroopers. The expressionism of 1920s and ’30s German cinema, replete with its shadows, darkness, and undercurrents of psychic decay, infiltrated the Hollywood studio system and merged with the American gangster genre of tough-talking wise guys inspired by the pulp fiction of the 1930s. This new hybrid genre introduced a stock of dramatic characters: the dangerous and brooding urban gangster-villain; the tormented middle-class innocent caught up in nefarious circumstances beyond his control or comprehension; the icy, diabolical femme fatale; and an array of edgy protagonists ranging from the introspective, world-weary anti-hero—think Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep—to the twitchy, slippery, would-be hero, the third-rate, small-time hood looking to get ahead in a hostile world for which he is ill-equipped—think Richard Widmark in Night and the City.

Eventually the netherworld of noir infiltrated the A list, its blackness spreading like spilled ink on porous newsprint. Billy Wilder, one of the many European refugees who worked in the genre, perfected it with the star-studded Double Indemnity (1944), and the style became so prevalent and nearly respectable that only a few years later, in 1950, Wilder saw fit to take it down a peg, satirizing noir and Hollywood itself with impish glee in Sunset Boulevard.

Noir City impresario Eddie Muller has crafted another program of classics and rarities, cleverly centered for maximum publicity on a theme guaranteed to bring him plenty of ink: “Newspaper Noir.” For with newspapers themselves currently immersed in their own noirish melodrama—jobs on the line and the fate of the medium in doubt—what film critic could resist a chance to wallow in that uncertainty by delving into Muller’s festival of fear and loathing?

For beleaguered journalists, the pleasures are many, beginning with the temptation to indulge in the nostalgic fantasy of the old-school newspaperman, a gumshoe reporter gazing skeptically from beneath the brim of a jaunty fedora, coldly examining the facts through the drifting smoke of an angled cigarette. No white-collar J-school grad, he; his sleepless nights are spent roaming rain-soaked streets and decadent nightclubs, trash-strewn alleys and cut-rate motels—places where anything can happen, and often has, just before he arrives. But enough of romance; the flip side of this coin is a dose of hard-boiled reality served with a dash of existentialist nightmare, as the modern-day journalist is more akin to Widmark than Bogart—cowering, doomed and anxiety-ridden, forever on the run from controlling forces poised to dispense a fate worse than a pink slip.

The festival begins with the former. Deadline USA (1952) is a bold and elegiac story of old-school journalistic integrity. Editor Bogart battles the avarice and ignorance that leads two spoiled and spiteful heiresses to put his paper on the block, and worse still, to sell it to an unworthy, scandal-mongering competitor who doubtless intends to bolster his own tawdry tabloid by closing down the competition. It’s a familiar story here in the Bay Area as the MediaNews chain has gobbled up a string of once-proud papers, large and small, to encircle the metropolis with a newspaper empire that consolidates its profits in Denver by cutting local staff and starving its newspapers of news. As rumors circulate about an impending MediaNews takeover of the only remaining Bay Area prize, the ailing San Francisco Chronicle, and as publicly traded corporations continue to run the nation's smaller independents out of business, Deadline USA only gains in relevance.

The festival closes with a look at the underbelly of the news world with the classic Clifford Odets-penned Sweet Smell of Success (1957), in which Burt Lancaster, as gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, toys with Tony Curtis in a demonstration of the heady abuse of power acquired through the pen. And between there are several more classics—including The Killers (1946), another Lancaster vehicle—but many more rarities, most not available on DVD, including Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps (both 1956), two wrongly neglected noirs by another towering figure of German cinema, Fritz Lang, whose early work was instrumental in shaping the genre.

Occasionally the selections veer slightly from newspapers into other media. The Unsuspected (1947), for example, stars Claude Rains as a radio personality who manages to maintain his celebrity as those around him begin to mysteriously die off. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian director best known today for Casablanca (1942), and scored by German émigré Franz Waxman, the film is produced with a deft touch, including a lovely expressionist motif in which the killer’s reflection, upside down and ominous, always appears just as he commits his crime, drifting into focus in the glass top of a table or in the black wax of a record—a succinct visual cue that the world is out of kilter.

Desperate (1947), a quick and dirty thriller, features the always suave and menacing Raymond Burr tracking innocent Steve Brodie to exact revenge over the execution of Burr’s hoodlum brother. Director Anthony Mann sets the tone in the first few minutes with a classic mise en scene that shows a darkened gangster hideout illuminated only by a swinging lamp, set into motion by the flailing arms of a man sent flying with a right hook from Burr’s ruthless gangster.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man begins by building up the myth of Scott Walker, the narrator informing us of the elusiveness of the man, including the years of silence in which the singer rarely allowed himself to be photographed, at least not without customary sunglasses and visor pulled low. But if the opening of Stephen Kijak’s film seems a bit portentous, perhaps we can afford to be forgiving, as the music he documents has that same blend of grandiosity, mystery and sweeping melodrama.

But once he is on screen, humble, shy and thoughtful at the age of 60, the myths not only disappear but seem downright silly. In his appearance and his politeness and his reticence, the still boyish-looking Walker bears resem-blance to Beck, an artist 30 years his junior whose elegiac, string-laden 2002 album Sea Change evoked the same gloomily atmospheric grandiosity that Walker pioneered.

The film, opening Friday, Jan 23, at Shattuck Cinemas, provides an efficient if quick overview of Walker’s career: Noel Scott Engel, born in 1944, was just another pompadoured teenager in the age of rock and roll before joining a group called the Walker Brothers, a successful trio of heartthrobs that contained no brothers and no Walkers. Scott was not the band's lead singer at first, only taking the microphone for moody ballads to which his fluid baritone was better suited. But he soon become the band's frontman as their singles climbed the charts, their popularity in England putting them on a par with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Just a couple of years later, the band dissolved and Walker went solo with a string of Top Ten albums—Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3—that featured a mix of covers and original material.

Scott 4 was his best yet, an album of all original material in which Walker fully met his potential, incorporating classical music, European literary influences, and a richer, more personal sense of melancholy. The songs were unique, even daring, and to this day Scott 4 is looked upon as perhaps his best work. But quite surprisingly, considering the great success of its predecessors, it failed to make a dent in the charts.

The commercial failure of the album alarmed his record company, and perhaps Walker too, and for his next four albums, whether by choice or by force, he shelved his own songs in favor of covers. Walker now looks upon these as lost years and refuses to allow any of these records to be rereleased.

Though the situation kept him on the margins of the music world, and though his resurgence was some years off, Walker's appeal still burned brightly among those in the know, and there were plenty to champion his work. Most notably, Julian Cope, an English musician who rose from the punk scene of the 1970s, set a new wave of Walker appreciation in motion by producing a compilation of Walker’s songs, replete with a blank cover, so as to introduce the music without preconception or prejudice to a new generation. (Director Stephen Kijak might have taken a cue from Cope with this approach to the music, as one of the annoyances of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man is the decision to illustrate Walker's songs with silly, screensaver-like graphics, all pulsating lines and floating electronic ephemera. A better approach would have to been to play the songs over a black background or perhaps a still photograph of Walker himself; music like this requires no help from Mac graphics software.)

Walker reunited with his old band for a few albums in the late 1970s before resuming his solo work, but he has released only three albums since 1980. The documentary concludes with footage of Walker’s sessions for his most recent album, The Drift (2006), and these scenes both magnify and defuse the myth and mystery even further. Unusual methods and instruments—flower pots, lead pipes, garbage cans and butchered meats—are employed in sessions in which the ballcapped singer, far from the shady, elusive figure of legend, appears not only amiable, friendly and forthcoming, but even familiar. Though music of startling originality emanates from the man, he seems just like the boy next door.

It may be painful for a shy, nervous man to open up his process for scrutiny; it may be deflating to see his shrouded reputation laid bare and made commonplace; and greater fame and mainstream attention may deprive his fans of a bit of the prized cult status which they’ve enjoyed for decades. But Scott Walker: 30 Century Man will hopefully bring wider appreciation to a unique musical talent who deserves a spot among the exceptional popular musicians of his time.

Pianist Sarah Cahill will perform “A Sweeter Music,” music for peace from nine composers, including Terry Riley, Yoko Ono, Frederic Rzewski, Bay Area band The Residents—and Berkeley’s 17-year-old composer, Preben Antonsen, with video by John Sanborn, Cahill’s husband, this Sunday at Hertz Hall on the UC campus for Cal Performances’ 20th Century & Beyond music series.

Tomorrow, Jan. 23, Cahill will lead a panel, including Antonsen, Jerome Kitzke, Larry Polansky and Sanborn, co-sponsored by the UC Dept. of Music as a Composers’ Colloqium, 6 p.m. in Wheeler Hall on campus, admission free.

The music Sunday includes excerpts from Peter Garland’s “After the Wars” (from a Tu Fu poem: “The nation is ruined, but mountains and trees remain” and Basho’s haiku: “Summer grass/all that remains/of young warriors’ dreams”), various pieces from Larry Polansky’s ‘B’Midbar’ (which includes American Sign Language, a Shaker hymn and audience participation), “Toning” by Yoko Ono, Rzewski’s “Peace Dances” (commissioned by Robert Bielski), Jerome Kitzke’s “There Is a Field,” “drum no fife (Why We Need War)” by The Residents, Antonson’s “Dar-al-Harb, House of War” (dedicated to his cousin, who fought in Iraq), Mamoru Fujieda’s “The Olive Branch Speaks,” Terry Riley’s “Be Kind to One Another (Rag)” commissioned by Stephen Halm and Mary Jane Beddow.

“Growing up in Berkeley in the ’60s,” Cahill begins her program notes, “I was often confused by what the demand was really about. I heard people chant it, sing about it, yell it and scream it, put it on signs and slogans and wear it on T-shirts ... Not until later did I understand how powerful these voices were.”

“As the war in Iraq was dragging on,” Cahill said, “I was trying to think of something to do about it. I didn’t feel any voice at all. So I started calling up composers I knew, asking them for music that had a vision of peace, including what was larger than just Iraq, wider in range. I’ve ended up getting new pieces all the time. It stretches me, musically speaking.”

Cahill emphasized the range of work: “I like mixing it up, different kinds of music from different kinds of composers”—and the lack of a prescriptive, overriding message: “The project is not making a statement. It’s such a complicated subject for all of us. We all have some sort of experience which makes it so complex. Terry Riley wanted to write something pro-peace [and has commented “it became a hit with my very young twin grandchildren, who always wanted me to play it for them when they got into bed at night.”]; Preben Antonsen, who wrote his piece at 16, dedicated it to his cousin, who was an interrogator in the war, and came back damaged. For him, the violence was really personal.”

Sanborn spoke about the “triptych environment” he’s created, with three screens behind and above the piano, of the Mathew Brady Civil War photographs that will be screened during Jerome Pitsky’s piece, inspired by Rumi and by Whitman, which uses drumming and whistling. “He’s written something very joyful with the feeling that the event of death can be violent, horrifying—but that you can’t look away”—and about Yoko Ono’s work: “What I like is that she looked in a different direction than everyone else. They were looking at the foreground; she was looking at the deep background; instead of in the world, in the self, something organic rather than topical or political. Very elemental.”

“Yoko’s piece is very simple,” Cahill said, “She had the idea that piano music became so ornate and embellished in the 19th century that it’s important to get back to simplicity, to play just the basic chord, let it resonate more directly.

“I regret there’s only one piece by a woman on this program,” Cahill continued. “Pauline Oliveros’ piece just needed more time to prepare—it involves audience participation—and Meredith Monk and others haven’t written theirs yet. It’s an ongoing project; a different group will be premiered later.”

What do you do if your dear friend has forked out a bundle for a canvas you can only see as a phony work of art, not even decor, much less a picture?

Triangulate that between three middle-aging men, gallery owners or collectors, and you get the drift of Yasmina Reza’s international hit of a few years back, Art, now onstage at Altarena Playhouse in Alameda. Stewart Lyle has directed the show in a deftly interactive way that eschews the usual way the Playhouse is configured for audience interaction—in-the-round—so the audience faces either a blank wall or the white-on-white nonobjectivity that “graces” it in the eyes of its apparently infatuated possessor, portrayed with low-key insecurity by Keith Jeffards.

The little duets, the talking behind another’s back, which make up the vignettes of the play when the three friends aren’t all together, the air thick with oneupsmanship, supposedly take place in Paris, where Art premiered. In Christopher Hampton’s English adaptation, although the locale remains Parisian, there’s a definitely Anglo edge to the games these chums play.

Hampton, best-known for his adaptation of Laclos’ epistolary novel masterpiece, Liaisons Dangereuses, made into the hit film Dangerous Liaisons, has a tendency to shift the Gallic into Brit gear, especially when engaging in the powerplay of relationships. It would be interesting to compare a production in the original French, which I would suspect to be a bit more modenized LaBiche or Feydeau than a burlesque of the Somerset Maugham “Problem Play.”

But this production amiably slides around all that by making it as genially, as ambiguously American as My Dinner with Andre was onscreen—and similar, in that the audience audibly reacts to all the pontificating about art, the explosions of personal resentments, the cheap attacks that only friends can make on each other ... yet not in unison, but any and each spectator in his or her own particular time and manner.

The trio onstage plays off of, even provokes that, with John Hale in particular as a feline, self-absorbed figurativist, fanning up the flames of left-handed compliment and back-handed derision.

Matthew Lai is the go-between, the more “normal”—and passive-aggressive—friend, whom the others will even gang up on when they’re not at each other’s throats.

Art has become a staple of community theaters (an inverted oxymoron?)—and this is good, funny community theater, a nice twist on the usual escapism of the stage. What better way to spend a weekend evening than to dine out with friends, then sit together to laugh at a trio of snotty buddies ready to gouge out each other’s eyes on the way to the restaurant? It’s delicious. And all because of Art!

Kingman Hall today. The arched loggia has been enclosed in glass, and front-yard parking is now the norm.

The first Theta Xi house at 1739 Euclid Ave., left, was designed by Thomas D. Newsom. (San Francisco Call).

By Daniella Thompson

The fireplace in the creekside amphitheater, center, is original, but the stone seats are a recent improvement.

By Daniella Thompson

The butterfly gate on Le Conte Ave., right, is the latest installation in the amphitheater improvement project.

By E.J. McCullagh

Theta Xi house at 1730 La Loma Ave. in a Berkeley promotional brochure.

Few houses in Berkeley (or anywhere, for that matter) can boast the picturesque setting and colorful history of Kingman Hall, the student co-op at 1730 La Loma Avenue. Perched above the oak-wooded canyon of Strawberry Creek, the building overlooks a sunken garden with a creekside amphitheater. Built in 1914 for Nu Chapter of the Theta Xi fraternity, the house has mirrored the history of Berkeley over the past 95 years.

Theta Xi, an engineering fraternity, established its Berkeley chapter in March 1910. The first ten members took up residence in the old Kappa Sigma house at 1739 Euclid Avenue—an ornate High-Peaked Colonial Revival affair designed in 1900 by Thomas D. Newsom. The original owner was Demetrius Satoff, a Bulgarian-born shoemaker and realtor doing business at 2121 Center Street.

Four years after its founding, Nu Chapter arranged for more desirable lodging. On May 3, 1914, the Oakland Tribune announced: “Theta Xi will move on August 1 to occupy their new $27,000 structure at Le Conte and La Loma. This house is the gift of wealthy alumni and is complete in every detail. It contains accommodations for thirty besides the sleeping porches and two guest rooms. A billiard room in the basement is also being planned for. The first floor outside will be constructed of brick and the remaining two stories will have a rough plaster finish.”

The completed building, a 25-bedroom dormered country villa with a triple-arch entrance loggia, ended up entirely stucco-clad with the exception of its brick base. The architects listed in the building permit were Drysdale & Thomson, Sharon Building, San Francisco. The contractor was the Barry Building Co. of Oakland.

While nothing is currently known about Thomson, Charles W. Drysdale (1872-1918) was the right-hand man of eminent San Francisco architect George W. Kelham (1871-1936), who had his offices in the Sharon Building, which he had designed. Constructed in 1912, the building teemed with architectural offices, but it’s not likely that Drysdale & Thomson had an independent practice, since Drysdale worked for Kelham until the end of his short life. Thomson, possibly a structural engineer, may have been another Kelham employee.

Kelham received his architectural training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1898 joined Trowbridge & Livingston of New York as a designer. In 1906, he was dispatched by this firm to San Francisco as project supervisor for the rebuilding of the Palace Hotel, which had been devastated in the earthquake. Here Kelham opened his own office, and in October of the same year brought Drysdale out from Chicago to run his office.

Charles W. Drysdale was born in Illinois and worked for a while in Washington, D.C. For a dozen years before his premature death he oversaw all of Kelham’s major architectural projects, including the rebuilding of the Palace Hotel, supervising the building of the Panama Pacific Exposition (1915), and designing the Carnegie (Main) Library at the San Francisco Civic Center (1917).

Drysdale died suddenly of heart failure on Sept. 4, 1918. His obituary, published the same month in The Architect & Engineer, informed, “A short time before his death Mr. Drysdale was conversing with his chief and apparently was enjoying the best of health. He expired at his desk before medical assistance could be procured.” The same article reported that “Mr. Kelham was especially pleased with Mr. Drysdale’s work in connection with the building of the Carnegie Library in the San Francisco Civic Center. The minutest detail was not overlooked here. Mr. Drysdale personally designed and superintended the construction of the new Elks’ home in San Rafael, himself being an active member of that order. Mr. Kelham pays a high tribute to the worth and character of the deceased. ‘He was the fine type of man and in every way a credit to the profession,’ said Mr. Kelham.”

Kelham would go on to succeed John Galen Howard as the University of California’s supervising architect, a position he retained from 1927 until his death in 1936. His Berkeley designs include Bowles Hall (1928-29); the Life Sciences Building (1930); International House (1930); Moses Hall (1931); McLaughlin Hall (School of Engineering, 1931); and Harmon Gymnasium (1933, now altered beyond recognition).

Drysdale’s design for the Theta Xi chapter house was apparently a success, for in October 1914, a mere ten weeks after it had opened, the building was selected by the students’ executive committee to serve as housing for the varsity football squad during its last weeks of training.

Theta Xi’s Nu Chapter resided at 1730 La Loma Avenue until 1964, but trouble began several years earlier. On October 4, 1959, a physics student by the name of Donald S. Wood limped into Cowell Hospital. Two days earlier he had been initiated into Theta Xi, and now he was suffering from acute nephritis. While young Wood was reluctant to talk about what had taken place, his father, a Los Angeles aircraft company executive, charged that Donald had been beaten with a paddle and forced to eat a large chunk of raw liver.

The Wood incident took place shortly after a University of Southern California student had choked to death on a piece of raw liver during his fraternity initiation, and California Attorney General Stanley Mosk issued a stern warning against such practices. UC officials and the Berkeley police launched an investigation to determine whether hazing had taken place.

Such was the uproar that State Senator Fred S. Farr announced his plan to introduce a bill prohibiting freshmen from joining fraternities and sororities, saying that it would give students time to exercise mature judgment and help eliminate irresponsible hazing practices. The system, claimed Senator Farr, was particularly bad at Berkeley, where many students dropped out when they failed to be pledged. “This is a major loss, not only to the individuals but to our society, which can’t afford to let good brains be wasted,” said Farr.

Three weeks after his initiation, Donald Wood was still in the hospital. The investigation revealed that he was put through a series of exercises that contributed to his physical exhaustion, in violation of university policy. He had not been given raw liver but fed mush with a color additive, and he was accidentally struck in the stomach with a paddle. Dr. Glenn Seaborg, then the Berkeley campus chancellor, announced that the university was withdrawing recognition of Nu Chapter for one year. In addition, seven of the chapter’s officers were placed on probation for the duration of the academic year. The Woods elected not to press charges.

Youthful anti-establishment sentiment in the 1960s robbed fraternities of their cachet, shrinking their memberships. Simultaneously, the university exerted pressure on the Northside Greek-letter societies to move south of campus. Theta Xi’s Nu Chapter disbanded in 1964 and was not reestablished until 1977.

With the fraternity gone, 1730 La Loma Ave. became a rooming house for male students popularly known as Toad Hall. In 1969, the building was purchased by Harold Mefford, a Castro Valley and Hayward attorney who had just co-founded the East Bay’s largest builder of low-income housing, the Eden Housing Corporation.

Mefford’s professed intention was to provide affordable housing to students, but he rented to all comers. Craig Healy, a Toad Hall resident during the Mefford period, says that the house functioned more like a commune than a rooming house. One of the residents was Joy, Country Joe McDonald’s personal secretary, who lived in a basement room. Author/Merry Prankster Ken Kesey and rock star David Crosby used to buy their drugs from one of Toad Hall’s residents, and their cars were often seen parked in front of the house. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Toad Hall was an epicenter of the Berkeley counterculture-the coolest place to live.

The neighbors weren’t thrilled. A letter from the late Elena Herr to the Zoning Officer complained about the strange and transitory nature of the tenants, as well as the shoddy appearance: “Blankets and pieces of cloth hang from the windows in the way of curtains and the front lawn is being used as a parking lot. […] Cars and motorcycles are also being repaired there.”

The Mefford era was short-lived. In 1973, he sold the building for $127,000 to the Living Love Center, a non-profit organization led by Ken Keyes Jr., author of Living Love-a Way to Higher Consciousness. The center conducted Weekend Consciousness Growth Intensives and disseminated “The Living Love Way” via broadcasts on KQED-FM every Saturday evening from 7:30 to 8 p.m.

The neighbors found no reason to be satisfied with the new arrangement. A request for service in May 1973 noted “A very large bus, possibly a converted Greyhound, used as a permanent living quarters by its owner, is parked conspicuously in the front yard of 1730 La Loma.” The follow-up report revealed that Keyes himself was “temporarily living on the bus because he is a paraplegic.”

The battle to dislodge the Living Love Center continued for four years, with numerous complaints from neighbors, city inspections, and inter-departmental memos. But all attempts were to no avail. Then the center itself decided to pull up stakes. On Nov. 22, 1976, it approached the city of Berkeley with an offer to donate the property for park use if it could be determined that it was located on the Hayward fault line. The city declined the offer. Fearing a proposed apartment development, Elena Herr approached the University Students’ Cooperative Association, suggesting they buy it. The building was, in fact, sold to the co-op for $300,000 in 1977.

USCA dedicated 1730 La Loma Avenue in October 1977 as Harry Kingman Hall, in honor of the general secretary of Stiles Hall (University YMCA), who in February 1933 inspired 14 UC students to establish the first student housing cooperative in Berkeley.

The 50 residents of Kingman Hall carry on the traditions of their various predecessors in the annual Living Love party, an initiation rite that takes place each fall. Residents and initiates dress in toga-draped sheet; one by one, the newbies descend, book in hand, into the dimly lit entrance hall, where an electronic keyboard provides eerie background music. Whether this tradition incorporates occult artifacts from the Theta Xi fraternity is not publicly known.

Kingman Hall was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in January 1999. The Theta Xi chapter house is now located in the Cornelius Beach Bradley House (Edgar A. Mathews, 1897) at 2639 Durant Ave., designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in Nov. 1997.

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863.

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.

FRIDAY, JAN. 23

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with John King of the SFChronicle on “Innovative Architecture for Pleasure or Profit?” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org

Jewish Humanist Forum with Dr. Carl Djerassi on “Four Jews on Parnassus” on Jewish identities of four intellectuals of the 20th century, at 8 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. www.kolhadash.org

“Who is a Jew and Why?” with Rabbi Bridget at 6:15 p.m. at JGate, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. 559-8140.

SATURDAY, JAN. 24

Citywide Pools Master Plan Community Meeting at 10 a.m. at James Kenny Community Center, Comm. Rm., 1720 8th St. 981-6900.

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours

Vegetarian Cooking Class Healthful Resolutions: Low-Cal and High Flavor Learn to make traditional Vegetable Stew, Moroccan Stew, Curried Chickpeas and more from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $55, plus $5 food and material fee. Advance registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com

Latino Education Summit for college-bound students and their parents, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at California State Univ., East Bay. Free, but registration required. 885-3516. www.csueastbay.edu/latinosummit

“Alameda On The Edge: Alameda’s Budget Crisis, the Impact on Public Services, and the Future of Alameda Point” A town hall meeting panel discussion at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conference Rooms A & B, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. Suggested donation $5. www.alamedapublicaffairsforum.org

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552.

SUNDAY, JAN. 25

Beginning Birds Join an easy stroll around Jewel Lake from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. to see our winter avian residents. Binoculars available for loan. Call for meeting place. 525-2233.

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, designed by Julia Morgan, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 2315 Durant. 848-7800.

Planning Meeting for the People’s Park 40th Anniversary at noon at Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Help organize the festivities to celebrate this historic Park. 390-0830.

“President Obama’s Prospects and Constraints: Fulfilling an International Vision” with Prof. Jerry Sanders, Chair of Peace & Conflict Studies Program at UCB. United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter, Annual General Meeting at 2 p.m., speaker at 3:30 p.m. at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-1752. www.unausaeastbay.org

“Becoming a Published Author in the Book Business Today” A workshop with Alan Rinzler at 11 a.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222.

Wowsa Water! An indoor program to learn about water’s properties in an interactive way, for ages 7-12. Bring a small, plastic, recyclable bottle for a craft. From 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS.

Lunar New Year Celebration and other Asian Traditions with lion and dragon dancing, music, martial arts and arts and crafts activities for the whole family from noon to 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.

Celebrate Chinese New Year Make lanterns and dragon puppets from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 538 Ninth St., Suite 210, Oakland. Cost is $7. 456-8770. www.mocha.org

Lunar New Year at Habitot with art projects, music and stories for children 0-6, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $7-$8. www.habitot.org

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451.

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6134. www.eastbayscore.org

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425.

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit theEmeryville Marina. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233.

Hillside Club Book Lust Salon meets to discuss works by Hamilton Basso at 7:30 p.m. at 2286 Cedar St. Non-member donation $5. 845-4870. www.hillsideclub.org/booklust

2009 Earl Lectures “Behold…a New Thing: Emerging Expressions of Faithfulness” Examining new forms of spirituality and worship associated with the emerging church, Tues.-Thurs. at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free. For schedule of events see www.psr.edu/earllectures

Berkeley PC Users Group “Problem Solving” at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. near corner of Eunice St. meldancing@comcast.net

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992.

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830.

“The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” with Gwen Ifill and Neil Henry at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. www.kpfa.org/events

“Tied in a Single Garment of Destiny” An evening of conversation, cuisine, culture and community in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. at 6 p.m. at Regent’s Theater, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Presented by the YMCA of the East Bay. 451-8039, ext. 457.

Public Hearing on the Mental Health Services Act Prevention & Early Intervention Plan for Berkeley and Albany at 5 p.m. at 2640 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Mental Health Auditorium. A copy of the plan can be obtained at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/PressReleaseMain.aspx?id=33000 or call 981-5222.

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.

FRIDAY, JAN. 30

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Howard Gruber, M.D on “Poverty in Paradise” the Global Healing Program in Rotan, Honduras. Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org

Let it Snow! Build igloos out of snow blocks, experiment on ice using salts and watercolors, and make real snow at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $7-$8. www.habitot.org

Common Agenda Regional Network, working to reorder federal priorities from the military to human and environmental needs, meets at 2 p.m. at Gray Panther's office, 1403 Addison St. 524-6071.

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS.

Art Explorations Meet the artists of Bentley High and learn about the techniques they use in their ceramics and painting classes, at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233.

Albany Berkeley Soccer Club Spring Registration from noon to 5 p.m. at Cornell School multipurpose room, corner of Cornell and Solano Ave., Albany. Bring a birth certificate or passport. Cost is $70-$130. www.abscsoccer.com